VITAL RESOURCES ; 



HOW TO BECOME PHYSIOLOGICALLY 

Younger and Stronger. 



BEING A SCRUTINY INTO THE DOMAIN OF THE LAWS TO 
WHICH NATURE SOMETIMES MARVELLOUSLY 
RESORTS FOR AID IN ITS RESTO- 
RATIVE POWERS. 



BY JEROME KIDDER, M.D. 




NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

544 BROADWAY. 



$+ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 18(50. by 

JEROME KIDDER, M. D., 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
Southern District of New York. 



/67S- 



/4f- 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Introductory Remarks, 7 

Plurality of Personality — Mental Phenomenon, 11 

Plurality of Personality — Anatomical Phenomenon,. . 35 

Lateral Halves of the Brain and Body, 48 

Plurality of Personality, 64 

Metamorphosis, 72 

Hereditary Influences, 75 

Underground, or Latent Peculiarities, 80 

3|i* riages of Consanguinity, 84 

* .ia^rnal Impressions,. . .' 88 

Appetency — Body and Mind Reciprocate, 96 

Power of the Mind oyer the Body, 99 

Recipiency and Influence of Mind, 103 

Transforming Powers of the Mind 104 

Has the Mind Contour? 105 

Why Marriages of Consanguinity Restrict Vital Re- 
sources, 106 

Latent Qualities may be Aroused to Action, 115 

Plural Personality, .- 133 

Appendix, 145 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page. 

United Twins, 38 

Common Liver of United Twins, 39 

Four-legged Child, 46 

Lateral Halves of the Brain, 49 

Tracts of the Optic Nerves, 58 

Commissnra of the Optic Nerves, 59 

External and Internal Optic-Nerve Fibres, 60 

Commissnra of the Optic Nerves, 61 

Objects United in the Vision, 63 

The Nervous System, 65 

Egg of Butterfly, 72 

Caterpillar, 72 

Chrysalis, 73 

Butterfly, 75 

Resources by Parentage, 107 

Portrait, 138 

Portrait, 140 

Portrait 141 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

The phenomena of life is maryelons ; and what 
we know of it is only of its phenomena. What is 
proposed in this volume, is to open a farther yiew 
into this phenomena, which view contemplates the 
setting forth, that man is endowed with the pos- 
session of a plurality of personality, through which, 
by the aid of favoring circumstances, surround- 
ings and habits, and also by his inherent mental 
power, his active mental and physical constitution 
may be changed to a degree so as to secure a new 
lease of life with its blessings of health and happi- 
ness. 

The author does not think it very bold in him- 
self to make these apparently strange asseverations, 
because, if true, there is nothing in them more 
marvelous than is everywhere presented in the 
phenomena of nature, nor more unreasonable, 
when we consider certain facts already known ; 
and also because truth, in contradistinction to error, 
is not determined by the amount of marvelousness 
which it inspires, but rather by the evidences 
brought to its support. And the author proposes, 
in order to show that they are true, to present such 
facts in the phenomena of life for the support of 
them, as are accepted in history; and also, make 
allusion to. such as are universally recognized by 
the observations of mankind. 



8 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

The important conclusions presented in this vol- 
ume, which have been alluded to, will receive 
support from known physical laws, to which at 
first brief reference will be given, and then will be 
shown more fully in delineation those especially 
that are not so well known to general observa- 
tion. 

Chiefly of importance in the first regard, it may 
be stated, that by the law of hereditary descent, the 
child usually resembles one or both of its parents 
in its mental, moral and physical peculiarities. 
Also, occasionally, the resemblance is more of a 
grand-parent, or great grand-parent, or of another 
person in the same line of ancestry ; or the resem- 
blance may be one far back in the line of ancestry. 
Thus, .the hereditary influence often runs "un- 
derground " for one or more generations, and may, 
while in this condition, be considered as latent. 

The physiological constitutions of mankind dif- 
fer, so that the same kind of occupation and asso- 
ciations, the same quality of food, air, etc., is not 
equally beneficial to all, but rather, that which is 
good for one is not so good for another. 

The mind has great power over the body : the 
body is affected by the voluntary and involuntary 
conditions of the mind, favorably or unfavorably, 
according to what that condition may be : and the 
will has great power to determine the condition of 
the mind, and through it that of the body. 

And by the reader observing the relation which 
these facts bear to each other, no matter in what 
order they be considered, it will be found, as the 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 9 

author believes, that they are of themselves suffi- 
cient to lead us to look for the conclusions previ- 
ously stated, and which, he thinks, will be sus- 
tained by the evidence presented in this volume. 

Theories that have no other evidence for their 
foundation than that their authors desire them to 
be true, have always been abundant enough. It is 
believed the reader will be convinced that the 
theories proposed in this volume are founded en- 
tirely on a different kind of evidence. 

One of the principal observations which caused 
the author to give thought and study to the 
feature of this work was as follows : A child about 
five or six years of age, which especially resembled 
its father, in the expression of its eyes and general 
physiognomy, was taken to the same school where 
its mother had received her early education — there 
where the same scenes were presented to its view, 
and the same influences in every way surrounded 
it. After a few weeks the child had lost the especial 
resemblance to its father, and now the expression 
of its features had become unmistakably changed 
to the resemblance of its mother. 

In reflecting on this fact, and bearing in mind 
the several laws of inheritance, of the power of 
mind upon the body, the law of latency, etc., to 
which the author has referred on the preceding 
page, very naturally the following inquiries would 
be presented for consideration : • 

If the child, at first seeming to resemble more 
its father, were to have such surroundings, associa- 
tions, qualities of food, etc., as were more habitual 
1* 



10 IKTKODUCTOKY EEMAEKS. 

with its father, would the resemblance of the child 
to its father more likely be continued and even 
increased ? And was it the change in the associa- 
tions, thoughts, studies, manner of living, etc., to 
that of the early days of its mother which caused 
the child to take on a physiological condition more 
allied to her ? 

If scrutiny into physiological laws should show 
that these questions merit an affirmative answer, 
then, furthermore, suppose the mother to be strong 
and healthy, and the father feeble in health, would 
the child, if continuing to resemble its father in 
physiognomy, from continuing the influences that 
so determine, — would the child also then take on 
the feeble condition of the father and be weakly, 
and in consequence, perhaps die prematurely ? 
And if by changing to the resemblance of its 
mother, in physiognomy, from a change of influ- 
ences, would the child take on the strong, healthy 
diathesis of its mother also, thus favoring the 
probability of health 'and long life ? These seem 
to be very important considerations, and worthy 
the careful consideration of all people. 

This subject seems to open directly to that of 
the plurality of the personality of the individual 
man : therefore, the important facts, which have 
regard to such mental and physical phenomena, 
will receive immediate consideration in the fol- 
lowing pages ; and the conclusions which they seem 
to reveal, if true, may be available for human wel- 
fare. 



PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

MENTAL PHENOMENON. 

(1.) Plurality of personality presents occasionally 
extraordinary and impressive mental phenomenon. 
In January, 1816, Dr. Mitchell reported to " The 
Medical Repository " the following case : "When I 
was employed," says he, " early in December, 1815, 
with several other gentlemen, in doing the duty 
of a visitor to the United States Military Academy, 
at West Point, a very extraordinary case of double 
consciousness in a woman was related to me by one 
of the professors. Major Ellicott, who so worthily 
occupies the mathematical chair in that seminary, 
vouched for the correctness of the following narra- 
tive, the subject of which is related to him by 
blood, and an inhabitant of one of the western 

counties of Pennsylvania : — Miss E possessed, 

naturally, a very good constitution, and arrived at 
adult age without having it impaired by disease. 
She possessed an excellent capacity, and enjoyed 
fair opportunities to acquire knowledge. Besides 
the domestic arts and social attainments, she had 
improved her mind by reading and conversation, 
and was well versed in penmanship. Her memory 
was capacious, and stored with a copious stock of 
ideas. Unexpectedly, and without any forewarn- 
ing, she fell into a profound sleep, which continued 
several hours beyond the ordinary term. On 
waking, she was discovered to have lost every trait 
of acquired knowledge. Her memory was tabula 



12 PLUEALTTY OF PERSONALITY. 

rasa — all vestiges, both of -words and things, were 
obliterated and gone. It was found necessary for 
her to learn everything again. She even acquired", 
by new efforts, the art of si3elling, reading, writing, 
and calculating, and gradually became acquainted 
with the persons and objects around, like a being 
for the first time brought into the world. In these 
exercises she made considerable proficiency. But, 
after a few months, another fit of somnolency in- 
vaded her. On rousing from it, she found herself 
restored to the state she was in before the first 
paroxysm ; but was wholly ignorant of every event 
and occurrence that had befallen her afterward. 
The former condition of her existence she now 
calls the Old State, and the latter the ISTew State ; 
and she is as unconscious of her double character 
as two distinct persons are of their respective na- 
tures. For example, in her old state she possesses 
all her original knowledge ; in her new state only 
what she acquired since. If a gentleman or lady 
be introduced to her in the old state, and vice versa, 
(and so of all other matters,) to know them satis- 
factorily she must learn them in both states. In 
the old state she possesses fine powers of penman- 
ship, while in the new, she writes a poor awkward 
hand, having not had time or means to become ex- 
pert. During four years and upward, she has un- 
dergone periodical transitions from one of these 
states, to the other. The alterations are always 
consequent upon a long and sound sleep. Both 
the lady and her family are now capable of con- 
ducting the affair without embarrassment. By sim- 



MENTAL PHE^OMEKO^. 13 

ply knowing whether she is in the old or new state, 
they regulate the intercourse, and goyern them- 
selves accordingly. A history of her curious case 
is drawing up by the Bey. Timothy Aldin, of Mead- 
ville." 

(2.) "Tiedenian," says Dr. Spurzheim, "relates 
the case of one Moser, who was insane on one side, 
and observed his insanity with the other. Dr. Gall 
attended a minister similarly afflicted : for three 
years he heard himself reproached and abused on 
his left side ; with his right he commonly appreci- 
ated the madness of his left side — sometimes, how- 
ever, when feverish and unwell, he did not judge 
properly. Long after getting rid of this singular 
disorder, anger, or a greater indulgence in wine 
than usual, induced a tendency to relapse."* Dr. 
Caldwell states, in allusion to these instances, that 
" another case perfectly analogous, produced by a 
fall from a horse, exists in Kentucky, not far from 
Lexington ."f I have received a communication of 
a case of a similar nature from a gentleman who 
was the subject of it. In a letter, dated 25th June, 

1836, the Eeverend E B writes to me thus : 

" You have heard, no doubt, of persons being de- 
ranged with one hemisphere of the brain, and set- 
ting themselves right with the other. Gall and 
Tissot, I think, both mention such cases. A cir- 
cumstance, however, of this kind occurred to myself 
a few months ago, which may perhaps strike you as 
singular. I was reading in my bedroom one night, 

* Phrenology, p. 37. t Elements of Phrenology, 2d edition, p. 82. 



14 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

after a day of unusually hard labor and excitement. 
All at once I seemed to read my author with two 
minds. To speak more intelligibly,, I read at the 
same time a sentence in my ordinary way, i. e., I 
understood the sense of what I was reading in a 
plain, matter-of-fact way, and I read it likewise in 
a more than usually imaginatiye way. There ap- 
peared to be two distinct minds, in fact, at work at 
the same page, at the same time, which continued 
after I closed my book and went to bed. The next 
morning the sensation was gone, and I have not 
distinctly experienced anything of the kind since. 
Do you not think that a different state of activity 
in the two hemispheres of the brain — perhaps in 
the region of Ideality and Marvellousness — may ac- 
count for this ? It is certainly different from what 
is called double vision, for I felt conscious of reading 
only one page." 

(3.) In Tupper's Inquiry into Gall's System, it is 
related that some years ago " a man was brought 
in who had received a considerable injury of the 
head, but from which he ultimately recovered. 
When he became convalescent, he spoke a language 
which no one about him could comprehend. How- 
ever, a Welsh milk-woman came one day into the 
ward, and immediately understood what he said. 
It appeared that this poor fellow was a Welshman, 
and had been from his native country about thirty 
years. In the course of that period he had entire- 
ly forgotton his native tongue, and acquired the 
English Language. But when he recovered from 
his accident, he forgot the language he had been 



MEXTAL PHE2S"OMEK"02S". 15 

so recently in the habit of speaking, and acquired 
the knowledge of that which he had originally ac- 
quired and lost ! " 

(4.) In February, 1822, Dr. Dyce read to the Eoyal 
Society the following incident : i% A patient, a girl 
of sixteen, became affected with an uncommon pro- 
pensity to fall asleep in the evenings. This was 
followed by the habit of talking in her sleep on 
these occasions. One evening she fell asleep in this 
manner, imagined herself an Episcopal clergyman, 
went through the ceremony of baptizing three chil- 
dren, and gave an appropriate extempore prayer. 
Her mistress took her by the shoulders, on which 
she awoke, and appeared unconscious of everything 
except that she had fallen asleep, of which she 
showed herself ashamed. She sometimes dressed 
herself and the children while in this state, or, as 
Mrs. L. called it, ' dead sleep ;' answered questions 
put to her, in such a manner as to show that she 
understood the question; but the answers were 
often, though not always, incongruous/' One day, 
in this state, she " set the breakfast with perfect 
correctness, with her eyes shut. She afterward 
awoke with the child on her knee, and wondered 
how she got on her clothes." Sometimes the cold 
air awakened her, at other times she was seized 
with the affection while walking out with the chil- 
dren. "■ She sang a hymn delightfully in this state, 
and, from a comparison which Dr. Dyce had an 
opportunity of making, it appeared incomparably 
better done than she could accomplish when well." 

" In the meantime a still more singular and in- 



16 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

teresting symptom began to make its appearance. 
The circumstances ivhich occurred during the par- 
oxysm ivere completely forgotten ~by her when the 
paroxysm was over, tut iv ere perfectly remembered 
during subsequent paroxysms" 

Dr. Dewar, referring to the above, calls it 
" an instance of a phenomenon which is sometimes 
called double consciousness, but is more properly a 
divided consciousness, or double personality, exhi- 
biting, in some measure, two separate and inde- 
pendent trains of thought, and two independent 
mental capabilities in the same individual; each 
train of thought, and each capability being wholly 
dissevered from the other, and the two states in 
which they respectively predominate subject to fre- 
quent interchanges and alternations." 

Dr. Comb is informed by Dr. Abel, of an Irish 
porter to a warehouse, who " forgot, when sober, 
what he had done when drunk ; but, being drunk, 
again recollected the transactions of his former 
state of intoxication. On one occasion, being 
drunk, he had lost a parcel of some value, and in 
his sober moments could give no account of it. 
Next time he was intoxicated he recollected that 
he had left the parcel at a certain house, and there 
being no address on it, it had remained there safe, 
and was obtained on his calling for it." 

(5.) The case of George Mckern of New Orleans, 
was noticed in the news journals last winter, and is 
further referred to in Frank Leslie's Illustrated 
Neivspaper, of March 6th, 1869, as follows : 

" The curious, though by no means unexampled 



MENTAL PHENOMENON. 17 

case of George Mckern, a German, of New Orleans, 
who, after being all but killed by a fall from a plat- 
form some months ago, and for many weeks en- 
tirely deprived of eyery sense as well as of con- 
sciousness, has recovered his health completely and 
his powers of mind — his memory excepted, which 
at present dates entirely from the beginning of his 
recovery, and is a complete blank as to all and 
every one — persons, words, things — his knowledge 
of which had been acquired before the fall, cannot 
but suggest the question, what relation memory 
really has to the personal identity of man ? The 
youth seems to have been, for a month at least, in 
a condition of complete detachment from the outer 
world, without any power of sight, or hearing, or 
speech ; at the end of seven weeks he had recovered 
these senses and could use his tongue freely, but 
he retained no glimmer of recollection of any word, 
either of his native German, or of English, which 
he had known before the accident, and his own 
mother and other friends were to him entirely new 
acquaintances, whom he had to learn to know 
afresh. He had to begin acquiring the language 
of those around him as if he had been an infant, 
and his progress was almost as slow. Still, all his 
faculties seemed acute and bright, and, dating 
from the origin of his new memory, he seemed to 
retain impressions well. His case is not a unique 
one. It is not impossible, if we may judge by some 
similar cases, that he should suddenly recover some 
day the whole of his suddenly extinguished stock 
of knowledge. 



18 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

" There is an old case of a student of Philadel- 
phia whose memory was suddenly annihilated by a 
fever. He began painfully learning everything 
afresh, and had got as far as Latin, and had just 
mastered the Latin grammar, when his whole 
stock of previous knowledge returned as suddenly 
as it left him. It is quite possible that this JSTew 
Orleans lad might, if he had a fever or a fresh fall, 
or any new disturbance of the brain, recover his old 
memory and lose his new one, i. e., recover the re- 
collection of all that he knew before the accident, 
and lose the memory of all that he has acquired 
since. Cases are on record of this sort of alternat- 
ing memory, due to some fever, the first attack of 
which modified seriously, we suppose, the condi- 
tion of the nervous system, and the second attack 
of which reinduced the old condition of the brain, 
obliterating completely the latter phase. It is quite 
conceivable, then, that George Mckern may som« 
day suddenly recover the memory of the first 
twenty years of his life, and at the same moment 
lose that of the interval between the end of his 
twentieth year and the date at which this second 
solution of continuity might take place. George 
Mckern is a living example of a man who has pre- 
existed for twenty years on this earth before his 
own memory can authenticate for him any one act 
of his life. In his case we happen to have plenty 
of witnesses of what he was and what he did before 
his new term of life began ; and we only wish, by- 
the-way, that the New Orleans physicians would 
publish an accurate and authentic account of all 



MENTAL PHE^OME^OK. 19 

the discontinuities and continuities between his 
"pre-existent life and character and his present life 
and character. It is not enough to know that he 
has to begin learning everything afresh. We want 
to know whether his character is materially changed, 
and in what direction — whether haying been, for 
instance, cautious or rash, he is now the same, or 
of an opposite disposition — whether haying been 
kind or inconsiderate, he has altered or not in that 
respect — whether his moral and religious nature 
shows any sort of close analogy to what it was be- 
fore, or any yery marked contrast — whether, hay- 
ing been selfish, for instance, he has become disin- 
terested, or haying been disinterested, he has be- 
come selfish — whether his tastes are materially 
altered or not by the great severance of the thread 
of his recollection — in a word, in what respects he 
reminds those who knew him of what he was before 
the accident, and in what respects, besides his 
memory, he is changed. The New Orleans physi- 
cians ought to carefully investigate and record 
these things, as it will be obvious to every 
one that they are of the highest psychological in- 
terest." 

(6.) Several interesting cases that seem to be 
best explained by the recognition of plurality of 
personality, are_ mentioned by Prof. Forbes Wins- 
low, in his work on the " Obscure Diseases of the 
Brain and Mind," which will be presented here, 
and explanatory reference will be given to them in 
another part of this work. "A lady, who died of 
obscure visceral disease, became delirious three 



20 PLUKALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

hours before death. She then began to talk in 
what appeared to those about her to be the i un- 
known tongue/ No one understood a word she 
uttered. It was eventually surmised that she was 
conversing in German, a language she had acquired 
in early life, but which she had apparently for- 
gotten. A native of that country, who was at the 
time on a visit at a friend's house, was sent for, 
and conversed with the patient in German. The 
relations of the lady assured the medical gentlemen 
in attendance, who were much struck by the sin- 
gular phenomenon, that she had not spoken the 
foreign language since she was ten years of age! 
Five years previously to her fatal illness, she ac- 
companied some friends to Frankfort, but whilst 
there never attempted, -although frequently urged, 
to converse in the language of the country. It was 
then supposed that all the knowledge she had ac- 
quired of German when a child had been effaced 
from her mind." 

(7.) "Dr. Bush alludes to a patient subject to at- 
tacks of recurrent insanity, whose paroxysms were 
always indicated by her conversing in a kind of 
Italian patois. As the disease advanced, and had 
reached its culminating point, the lady could only 
talk in French; at the decline of her illness she 
spoke only German; and during the stage of con- 
valescence she addressed those about her in her 
native tongue. This lady, when quite well, rarely 
spoke any but her own language ; and if she at- 
tempted to do otherwise, always did so with ex- 
treme diffidence and difficulty. During her attack 



MENTAL PHEKOMEKOIS". 21 

of insanity she spoke with great fluency, never, ap- 
parently, being at a loss for words to convey her 
ideas. It is said that, with the exception of the 
Italian, the other languages, German and French, 
were singularly accurate." 

(8.) " The Oomtesse de Laval had been observed 
by servants, who sat up with her on account of 
some indisposition, to talk in her sleep a language 
that none of them understood ; nor were they sure, 
or, indeed, herself able to guess, upon the sounds 
being repeated to her, whether it was or was not gib- 
berish. Upon her lying-in of one of her children, 
she was attended by a nurse who was of the province 
of Brittany, and who immediately knew the mean- 
ing of what she said, it being in the idiom of the 
natives of that country; but she herself, when 
awake, did not understand a single syllable of what 
she had uttered in her sleep upon its being retold to 
her. She was born in that province, and had been 
nursed in a family where nothing but that lan- 
guage was spoken, so that, in her first infancy, 
she had known it and no other; but, when she 
returned to her parents, she had no opportu- 
nity of keeping up the use of it; and, as I have 
before said, she did not understand a word of 
Breton when awake, though she spoke it in her sleep. 
I need not say that the Oomtesse de Laval never 
said or imagined that she used any words of the 
Breton idiom more than were necessary to express 
those ideas that are within the compass of a child's 
knowledge of objects, &c." * 

* "Ancient Metaphysics," by Lord Monboddo. 



22 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY.. 

(9.) "A gentleman was attacked by hemiplegia 
at an advanced age. He passed, a few days before 
death, into a state of low, rambling delirium. He 
then spoke only in French, a language he had not 
been known to speak for thirty years before. i This 
continued/ says Sir H. Holland, i until utterance 
ceased altogether to be intelligible/ " f 

(10.) " The following circumstance occurred in a 
Eoman Catholic town in Germany, a year or two 
before Mr. Coleridge arrived at G-ottingen. It was 
at the time a frequent subject of conversation. e A 
young woman of four or five and twenty, who 
could neither read nor write, was seized with a ner- 
vous fever, during which, according to the assever- 
ations of all the priests and monks of the neighbor- 
hood, she became possessed, as it appeared, by a 
very learned devil. She continued incessantly 
talking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in very pom- 
pous terms, and with the most distinct enunciation. 
This possession was rendered more probable by the 
known fact that she was or had been a heretic. 
Voltaire humorously advises the devil to decline all 
acquaintance with medical men, and it would have 
been more to his reputation if he had taken this 
advice in the present instance. The case had at- 
tracted the particular attention of a young physi- 
cian, and by his statement many eminent physi- 
ologists and psychologists visited the town, and 
cross-examined the case on the spot. Sheets full 
of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth, 
and were found to consist of sentences coherent 

+ " Mental Pathology." 



MEKTAL PHE^OMEKOK. 23 

and intelligible each for itself, but with little or no 
connection with each other. Of the Hebrew, a 
small portion of the whole conld be traced to the 
Bible; the remainder seemed to be the rabbinical 
dialect. All trick or conspiracy was ont of the 
question. Not only had the yonng woman ever 
been a harmless, simple creature, but she evidently 
was laboring under a nervous fever. In the town 
in which she had been resident for many years as 
a servant in different families, no solution presented 
itself. The young physician, however, determined 
to trace her past life from step to step, for the pa- 
tient herself was incapable of returning a rational 
answer. He at length succeeded in discovering the 
place where her parents had lived, travelled thither, 
found them dead; but, an uncle surviving, he 
learned from him that the patient had been char- 
itably taken by an old Protestant pastor at nine 
years of age, and had remained with him some years 
— even till the old man's death. Of this pastor the 
uncle knew nothing, but that he was a very good 
man. With great difficulty, and after much search, 
our young medical philosopher discovered a niece 
of the pastor's, who had lived with him as his 
housekeeper, and had inherited his effects. She 
remembered the girl; related that her venerable 
unclfe had been too indulgent, and could not bear 
to hear the girl scolded ; that she was willing to 
have kept her, but that after her patron's death the 
girl herself refused to stay. Anxious inquiries 
were made concerning the pastor's habits, and the 
solution of the phenomenon was soon obtained. It 



24 PLUEALITT OF PEESOKALITY. 

appeared that it was tlie old man's custom for years 
to walk up and down a passage of his house into 
which the kitchen door opened, and to read to him- 
self with a loud voice out of his favorite books. A 
considerable number of these were still in the 
niece's possession. The pastor was a learned man, 
and a great Hebraic scholar. Among the books 
were found a collection of rabbinical writings, to- 
gether with several of the Greek and Latin authors, 
and the physician succeeded in identifying so many 
passages with those taken down at the young wo- 
man's bedside, that no doubt could remain in any 
rational mind concerning the true origin of the im- 
pressions made on her nervous system.' " 

(11.) "Analogous phenomena are observable in 
some forms of somnambulism as well as of cata- 
lepsy. Sir W. Hamilton quotes a singular illus- 
tration from a German book by Abel : ' A young- 
man had a cataleptic attack, in consequence of 
which a singular change ivas effected in Ms mental 
constitution. Some six minutes after falling asleep, 
he began to speak distinctly, and almost always of 
the same objects and concatenated events, so that 
he carried on from night to night the same history, 
or rather continued to play the same part. On 
awakening, he had no reminiscence whatever of 
his dreaming thoughts, a circumstance, by ttt? way, 
which distinguishes this as rather a case of som- 
nambulism than of common dreaming. Be this, 
however, as it may, he played a double part in Ms 
existence. By day he was the poor apprentice of a 
merchant; by night he was a married man, the 



MENTAL PHENOMENON. 25 

father of a family, a senator, and in affluent cir- 
cumstances. If, during his vision, anything were 
said in regard to his waking state, he declared it 
unreal and a dream.' " 

"'A man loses all knowledge of a language ac- 
quired in early youth, in consequence of a severe 
blow upon the head, the effect of a serious derange- 
ment of the cerebral circulation, alteration in the 
molecular structure of the brain associated with an 
attack of fever, or the effect of paralysis, or apo- 
plexy. He recovers from illness, but with an entire 
forgetfulness of a language with which he was pre- 
viously familiar. He is advised, when restored to 
health, to re-learn it. He commences with the 
grammar, and makes an attempt to acquire the 
rudiments of the lost tongue. While so doing, he 
painfully realizes the mortifying fact that all recol- 
lection of what he had formerly so well known and 
highly valued is entirely obliterated from his mem- 
ory. He endeavors to translate some elementary 
classical work, and during a determined effort to 
resuscitate his dormant and, to all appearance, lost 
ideas, and revive former impressions by attempting 
to construe a difficult Latin sentence, he is con- 
scious of a physical change taking place in the 
brain : 

' Quick as Ithuriel's spear,' 

all his critical knowledge of the apparently forgot- 
ten language rushes back to his mind ! This illus- 
tration is not a hypothetical one. The following 
is an analogous case : 

(12.) " Eev. J. E , a clergyman of rare talent 

2 



26 PLUKALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

and energy, of sound education, while riding 
through his mountainous parish, was thrown vio- 
lently from his carriage, and received a violent 
concussion of the brain. For several days he re- 
mained utterly unconscious, and at length, when 
restored, his intellect was observed to be in a state 
like that of a naturally intelligent child, or like 
that of Caspar Hauser, after his long sequestration. 
The good man again, but now in middle life, com- 
menced his English and classical studies under 
tutors, and was progressing very satisfactorily, 
when, after several months' successful study, the 
rich storehouses of memory were gradually un- 
locked, so that in a few weeks his mind resumed 
all its wonted vigor, and its former wealth and 
polish of culture. For several years he has con- 
tinued his labors as a pastor, and has suffered no 
symptom of cerebral disturbance. The first evi- 
dence of the restoration of this gentleman's mem- 
ory was experienced whilst attempting the mas- 
tery of an abstruse Greek author, an intellectual 
effort well adapted to test the penetrability of that 
veil that so long had excluded from the mind the 
light and riches of its former hard-earned posses- 
sions." 

"A gentleman, about thirty years of age, of 
learning and acquirements, at the termination of a 
severe illness, was found to have lost the recollec- 
tion of everything, even the names of the most 
common objects. His health being restored, he 
began to reacquire knowledge like a child. After 
learning the names of objects, he was taught to 



MENTAL PHEXOITEXOX. ~ 27 

read, and after this, began to learn Latin. He had 
made considerable progress, when, one day in read- 
ing his lesson with his brother, who was his teach- 
er, he suddenly stopped, and put his hand to his 
head. Being asked why he did so, he replied, ' I 
feel a peculiar sensation in my head ; and now it 
appears to me that I knew all this before.' Erom 
that time he rapidly recovered his faculties. A state 
of mmd somewhat analogous occasionally occurs in 
diseases arising from simple exhaustion. Many 
years ago, Dr. Abercrombie attended a lady, who, 
from a severe and neglected diarrhoea, was reduced 
to a state of great weakness, followed by a remark- 
able failure of memory. She had lost the recol- 
lection of a particular epoch of her life, extending 
over the period of about ten or twelve years. She 
had formerly lived in another city, and the time of 
which she had lost the recollection was that dur- 
ing which she had lived in Edinburgh. Her ideas 
were consistent with each other, but they referred 
to things as they stood before her removal. She 
recovered her health after a considerable time, but 
remained in a state of imbecility resembling the 
dotage of old age." 

"It is a well-established fact that idiocy, appar- 
ently irremediable, connate imbecility, has been 
cured by a blow on the head ! ' Omnia exeunt in 
mysteriumj exclaims an old schoolman. Who can 
fathom the depths, unravel the intricate labyrinths, 
and penetrate into the arcana of the nervous sys- 
tem?" 

(13.) "A child up to the age of thirteen was 



28 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

idiotic, evidencing either a total deficiency of in- 
telligence, or a stunted intellect of the lowest grade 
and order. He fell from a height upon his head 
and was stunned. He rallied from this state of un- 
consciousness, and was, i Cr eclat JudamsV found to 
be in full possession of his intellectual faculties ! " 

"A somewhat similar case is recorded by Louyer- 
Villermay. A man suffered from a paralysis of 
memory, following a severe blow upon the head. He 
was fortunate enough (as the result established) to 
have a repetition of the physical injury, and, as 
the effect of this accident, his memory was immedi- 
ately restored to its original strength.* Petrarch 
records that Pope Clement VI., found his memory 
wonderfully strengthened after receiving a slight 
concussion of the brain." 

" ' I have been informed/ says Dr. Pri chard, ' on 
good authority, that there was, some time since, a 
family consisting of three boys, who were all 
considered as idiots. One of them received a severe 
injury of the head : from that time his faculties 
began to brighten, and he is now a man of good 
talents, and practices as a barrister. His brothers 
are still idiotic or imbecile.' " f 

"Father Mabillon is said to have been in his 
younger days an idiot, continuing in this condition 
until the age of twenty-six. He then fell with his 
head against a stone staircase and fractured his 
skull. He was trepanned. After recovering from 

* " Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales," vol. xxxii, p. 321. 
t " Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System," by J. C. Prichard, 
M. D., 1S22. 



MENTAL PHEKOMEifO^. 29 

tlie effects of the operation and injury, his intellect 
fully developed itself. He is said to have exhibited 
subsequently to the accident and operation, a mind 
endowed with a lively imagination, an amazing 
memory, and a zeal for study rarely equalled ! " 

The last several cases (pages 27 and 28), evi- 
dence, that one of the plural personalities had been 
in a passive condition, and that the power of the 
mind is restored by arousing it from that passive- 
ness so that the plural personalities act synchro- 
nously and in combination. Further reference to 
some of those cases will be given in a subsequent 
part of this work. 

The following cases show that a personality 
which is latent as far as mental expression is con- 
sidered, and though not aroused by disease or other 
impression to exhibit mental intelligence, as in the 
former cases, yet may be, or may become, sufficiently 
active to receive and take upon itself for awhile, 
by sympathy, the effects of the injuries or diseases 
of the personality that has manifested intellectual 
life, in order to so relieve the latter and aid its re- 
covery by allowing it absolute rest in passiveness. 

"Analogous singular inexplicable (as Dr. Wins- 
low says) psychical phenomena are observed in affec- 
tions of the brain associated with insanity. A man 
is seized with mental derangement whilst engaged 
in some manual employment, or when occupied in 
the contemplation of a particular idea or class of 
ideas. He recovers, and contemporaneously with 
his restoration to mental health, the mind recurs 
immediately to the train of thought or business in 



30 MENTAL PHE^OMEKOST. 

wliicli it was engaged when seized with insanity, 
all notion of duration being annihilated, the in- 
terval between the first moment of seizure and the 
restoration of reason appearing like a blank, or 
analogous to a troubled and distressing dream." 

" Phenomena of a somewhat analogous kind are 
observed in connection with conditions of sleep and 
temporary states of morbid unconsciousness result- 
ing from injuries of the head." 

" A person of the name of Samuel Chilton, a la- 
borer, of Timsbury, near Bath, in the year 1696, is 
said to have slept for seventeen continuous weeks, 
from the 9th of April to the 7th of August. Life 
was sustained by the daily exhibition of small quan- 
tities of wine. When he awoke he dressed himself 
and walked about the room, being, as the narrator 
obverves, ' perfectly unconscious that he had slept 
more than one night. ^Nothing could make him 
believe that he had been asleep for so lengthened a 
period, until upon going into the fields he saw 
crops of barley and oats ready for the sickle, which 
he remembered were only sown when he last vis- 
ited them.'"* 

" It is recorded of a British captain at the battle 
of the Nile, that he was giving an order from the 
quarter-deck of his vessel, when a shot struck him 
on the head, depriving him immediately of speech. 
As he survived the injury he was taken home, and 
remained deprived of sense and speech in Green- 
wich Hospital for fifteen months. At the end of 

* "Fraser's Magazine." 



PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 31 

that period, during which he is said to have mani- 
fested no sign of intelligence, an operation was per- 
formed on the head which almost instantaneously 
restored him to consciousness. He then immedi- 
ately rose from his bed, and not recognizing where 
he was, or what had occurred, expressed a desire to 
complete the order which had been so abruptly in- 
terrupted when he received his injury during the 
battle fifteen months previously." 

A farmer of good character, but whose mind 
was naturally of a melancholy cast, and who had 
suffered mental affliction, was engaged by a 
neighbor to enclose a piece of land with a post 
and rail fence, which he was to commence making 
the next day. At the time appointed he went into 
the field, and began with a beetle and wedges to 
split the timber out of which the posts and rails 
were to be prepared. On finishing this day's work, 
he put his beetle and wedges into a hollow tree, 
and went home. Two of his sons had been at 
work through the day in a distant part of the same 
field. On his return, he directed them to get up 
early the next morning to assist him in making 
the fence. In the course of the evening he became 
delirious, and continued in this situation several 
years, when his mental powers were suddenly re- 
stored. The first question he asked after the return 
of his reason, was whether his sons had brought in 
the beetle and wedges ? He appeared to be wholly 
unconscious of the time that had elapsed from the 
commencement of his delirium. His sons, appre- 
hensive that any explanation might induce a return 



32 MENTAL PHENOMENON. 

of his disease, simply replied that they had hcen 
unable to find them. He then immediately arose 
from his bed, went into the field where he had been 
at work a number of years before, and found the 
wedges and the rings of the beetle where he had left 
them, the beetle itself having mouldered away. Dur- 
ing this delirium his mind had not been occupied 
with those subjects with which it was conversant 
in health."* 

" Mrs. S , an intelligent lady, belonging to a 

respectable family in the State of New York, some 
years back undertook a piece of fine needle-work. 
She devoted her time to it almost unceasingly for 
a number of days. Before she had completed it 
she became suddenly insane. In this state, without 
experiencing any material abatement of her disease, 
she continued for about seven years, when her rea- 
son was suddenly restored. One of the first ques- 
tions which she asked after her sanity was restored, 
related to her needle-work. It is a remarkable fact, 
that during the long continuance of her mental 
aberration she. said nothing, so far as was recollect- 
ed, about her needle-work, nor concerning any of 
the subjects that usually occupied her mind when 
in health." 

In the Transactions of the French Academy of 
Sciences for 1719, there is published a statement 
illustrative of the subject under consideration. It 
is as follows : * 

" A nobleman residing at Lausanne, whilst giv- 
ing orders to a servant, suddenly lost his speech 

* "Dr. Prichard on ' The Diseases of the Nervous System.'' " 



PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 33 

and senses. Various modes of treatment were 
adopted to restore his intellect to a soimd state, 
but for a very considerable time without effect. 
For six months he appeared to be in a deep sleep, 
apparently unconscious of everything. At the end 
of that period a surgical operation was decided up- 
on and performed. The effect was to restore him 
to the use of consciousness and speech. When he 
recovered, the servant to whom he had been giving 
orders, upon entering the room, was asked by him 
if he had done what he was requested to do at the 
commencement of his illness, not being aware that 
any interval, except perhaps a very short one, had 
elapsed during his attack." * 

"A girl aged six years, while indulging in a 
game with her playmates, tossing and catching 
playthings on the pavement, failed to notice some- 
thing that was thrown to her, and- while hurriedly 
seeking for and inquiring about it, made a false 
step and fell upon the pavement. The cerebral 
concussion appeared to have been violent, and she 
was watched with much anxiety for about ten 
hours after the accident. She then, for the first 
time, opened her eyes and manifested signs of con- 
sciousness. She afterwards immediately jumped 
to the edge of her bed, exclaiming : ' Where is it ? 
where did you throw it ? ' and immediately com- 
menced throwing little articles from her dress, ex- 
claiming : ' Catch these/ By these acts she was 
manifestly continuing those physical operations 

* " The Academy received this statement from Crousaz, Mathemati- 
cal Professor at Lausanne, and author of a 'Treatise on Logic, 1 " &c. 



34 ANATOMICAL PHENOMENON. 

and the train of thought which had been so sud- 
denly arrested by her fall. No marked yascular 
reaction occurred in this case; the pupil was yery 
much contracted during the first six hours of the 
period of concussion, the pulse soft and hurried ; 
she yomited much, but did not open her eyes at 
any time until the moment of her sudden restora- 
tion to consciousness. Her recovery was perfect 
from that moment" 



PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

ANATOMICAL PHENOMENON. 

The plurality of the mental personalities of in- 
dividuals could scarcely, by possibility, have dis- 
tinctive proof, unless there should be occasionally 
such phenomena as has been presented in the pre- 
ceding chapter. And though such phenomena 
have no reasonable explanation outside the con- 
sideration of the plural personalities of individuals, 
this is not all the kinds of proof that can be 
brought to sustain such plurality, because, in- 
deed, there is presented for our study many well 
authenticated anatomical peculiarities that have 
great bearing upon this subject. 

In an essay on " Diplo-teratology," by Geo. I. 
Fisher, M.D., published in the Transactions of the 
New York State Medical Society, (Albany, 1868,) 
is presented strange phenomena of duplication in 
anatomy; and there are interesting specimens in 
the cabinet of the " Boston Society for Medical 
Improvement." 

In the British MedicalJournal of February 13 th, 
1869, James Y. Simpson, Bart., M. D., D. 0. L., 
Professor of Medicine and Midwifery in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, says : 

(14.) "United twins appear under a great va- 
riety of forms, and under very diverse degrees of 
duplicity. Sometimes the two individuals are com- 
plete in all respects, and are found united by the 
fronts of the chests and abdomen, or by the backs, 



36 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

or by their heads and scalps, or by the pelvis, or by 
the arms and sides. More frequently the two 
united persons are more or less incomplete in con- 
sequence of their junction being more intimate 
and deep at the line of union. The degree of in- 
completeness which thus occurs, varies infinitely. 
In some cases they are altogether double above, 
and altogether single below; or, in other words, 
they possess two heads and four arms, but only two 
lower extremities. Others again, are single above, 
and double below ; or they have one head and four 
lower extremities. Every conceivable gradation is 
found in the intermediate part and organs, in these 
varying degrees of double union. But the junc- 
tions, however diverse between the united twin in- 
dividuals, are found to conform to the general 
teratological law, that in the two, the same parts 
only unite to the same parts ; and not only muscle 
only to muscle, bone only to bone ; but the same 
muscle in the one twin unites at the line of con- 
junction to the same muscle in the other twin ; 
the same bone to the same bone; and the same 
nerve to the same nerve. The same organ and 
part, as the liver, intestine, pericardium, nose, ears, 
etc., to the same organ and part in the opposite in- 
dividual whenever the conjunction extends to these 
and other organs and parts. This teratological 
law of the union of like to like — eadem ibidem — is, 
as I have said, a general law in the structure of 
united twins ; but it is not an universal law. For 
in some descriptions of double monstrosity, when 
one of the two attached beings has the form of a 



ANATOMICAL PHENOMENON. 37 

dwarfed parasite^ the attached parasite does not 
necessarily conform in its mode and site of attach- 
ment to the principle of the union of the same 
parts to the same parts. 

The Siamese twins form the most remarkable 
instance of united twins in this respect — that, with 
the two bodies individually complete, they have 
lived to a more advanced age than any other 
instance in the records of science. Let me, there- 
fore, state some of the interesting (historical) ana- 
tomical and physiological facts regarding them. 

They were born in Siam in 1811, and are now 
58 years old. In 1829, were brought to the States 
for exhibition. * * * A curious circumstance 
which was noticed at a very early period by the 
twins, is that the two inner eyes — the left one of 
Eng, and the right of Chang — possess a much 
clearer and more distinct vision than the two 
outer. In fact, when the two inner ones are closed 
they say they are quite unable to distinguish any 
object clearly. 

I have ascertained by experiment, that the right 
ear of Eng is more acute than his left, and the 
twins, themselves, know very well that Chang is 
much deafer than his brother. He does not hear 
a watch in contact with his right ear. 

(15.) Professor Allen Thompson of Glasgow, has 
shown it to be a general law in relation to united 
twins, that the heart, liver, etc., are inverted in po- 
sition, or on the reverse side, in one of the hvo indi- 
viduals forming the united twins. This does not 
seem to hold good in relation to Chang or Eng. 



38 



PLUKALITY OF PERSONALITY. 



(16.) The following case of united twins, is one of 
what Jeoffrey St. Hilaire calls autositaries; two in- 
dividuals equally developed, and having life in com- 
mon. They are shown in outline in the following 
cut: 

Reported in the Rich- 
mond and Louisville 
Medical Journal, by 
Prof. A. B. Cook, A. 
M., M. D., Professor of 
Surgery in the Ken- 
tucky School of Medi- 
cine ; presented to him 
by E. 0. Bright, M. D., 
of eminence, Kentucky. 
These twins were born 
March 29th, 1865. 
Their mother was a mu- 
latto, aged twenty-eight 
years at their birth. 

" The connecting band extends from the zyphoid 
cartilages downwards to a point where the natural 
umbilicus should be; the skin is continuous on 
each surface with the corresponding abdominal 
walls, natural in appearance and without any trace 
of a median line or raphe between them. The 
band measures in its vertical diameter 4 inches; 
transverse at the sternal border 1^ inches, at the 
umbilical border 2 inches; thickness through the 
lower half J of an inch, upper half 1 inch. There 





This cut shows the double liver of this interesting case. B, right ; 
L, left ; C C, centre of the upper surface ; H H, hepathic veins con- 
verging and coalescing toward either extremity ; T T, trunks of the 
hepathic veins ; V, right vena cava ascendens ; JV, the common venous 
trunk of the right ; A, left vena cava ascendens ; iV", the common 
venous trunk of the right; J., left vena cava ascendens uniting with 
the left hepathic veins to form the common trunk 0; P, small section 
of lever detached to show hepathic veins at I; IT, umbilical vein; Y 
Y, ductus venosus of each side ; M, common diaphragm, showing the 
openings for the cavas, iVand 0. 



40 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

is but one common umbilical cord, which enters at 
the centre of the inferior border of the band, thus 
forming one single umbilicus for two beings ; it is 
natural in size and appearance, and is composed 
of one common umbilical vein and four hypogas- 
tric arteries with the usual envelopes." 

These infants died at birth, and a dissection re- 
vealed that the peritoneum (lining membrane of 
abdomen), formed one great continuous sac, which 
"accommodated itself to the separate abdominal 
walls and viscera of each, and a single liver com- 
mon to both. This viscus occupies an anomalous 
position: the greater part of the organ is sus- 
pended across the upper half of the cavity in the 
connecting band, the extremities terminating in 
the right hypo-chondrium of each. 

" The parenchymatous structure is analogous to 
other livers, with this difference : that in this com- 
mon organ we find no trace of any septum denot- 
ing an original development, in two parts, and we ■ 
have two sets of hepatic vessels having a promis- 
cuous distribution, from which common reservoir 
they distribute to two distinct individuals. In utero 
they were supplied with maternal blood through one 
common channel, the umbilical vein; and nour- 
ished and developed from one common source, the 
placental blood, which flowed through one common 
organ before general distribution. We have, in 
this abnormal development, an irregular sub- 
stance suspended in the septum, carrying the life- 
blood of two human beings. It is covered by per- 
itoneum ; • the vertical line of its under-surface is 



AKATOMICAL PHE^OMEKOtf. 41 

occupied by the trunk of the umbilical vein ; on 
either side two gall bladders, two cystic ducts, two 
hepatic ducts ; further removed from the common 
mesian plane, and nearer the centre of the under- 
surface, two shallow fissures, each giving exit to 
biliary ducts and deep lymphatics distributed to 
two. separate alimentary canals and thoracic ducts, 
each transmitting a hepatic artery, vena portse and 
hepatic nerves to nourish, support and feed a 
chemical laboratory, which distributes alike its in- 
vigorating or baneful "fluids to two living beings. 

" The office of this liver might be compared to 
that of a filter, placed in a recess common to two 
households, and from either extremity pouring out 
to the occupants a constant stream of pure invigor- 
ating fluid, or distributing the germs of sickness 
and death. 

" The physiological questions may be very brief- 
ly considered in two relations : first, through the 
common liver, and second, through the connecting 
soft tissues. In the liver terminate the peripheral 
extremities of a portion of the two great nervous 
systems; the cerebro-spinal axes, connecting its 
animal sympathies with the cerebrums through 
some filaments derived from the pneumogastric 
and right phrenic nerves. The ganglionic systems 
connecting intimately and inseparably, the organic ' 
functions through the hepatic plexuses derived 
from the solar plexuses of two beings. We have 
in the neiwes, a union of sympathy and organic 
function. The complicated structure of the organ 
fits it for its great function, the distillation of the 



42 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

bile, a constant secretion in greater or less quan- 
tities ; and constantly delivered from this common 
source to two digestive apparatuses. 

"This fluid, complex in its chemical compo- 
sition, is not a mere excretion as some maintain ; 
but it is a necessity to nutrition and life, as proved 
by experiments on dogs in which death soon fol- 
lowed the absence of bile in the intestinal canal. 
Two lymphatic systems also act their part in the 
hidden mysteries which govern the laws of health. 
In short, this single organ performs all the im- 
portant physiological functions connected with the 
liver for two individuals. 

" The physiological union through the soft tis- 
sues of the connecting band are of minor impor- 
tance, being limited to the capillary inosculations 
of the sanguineous and lymphatic systems, and the 
intermingling of the sensor and motor nerves for 
a short distance on either side of median line. 
The healthy relations of the two then are common, 
derived from the same fountain head and disturbed 
by the same causes. 

In their pathological relations any symptomatic 
disease of the liver, whether functional or organic, 
would necessarily affect both alike. Functional 
disorders of any of the duplicated organs, as the 
brain, lungs, heart, etc., of one would not disturb 
necessarily the health of the other twin. Local in- 
flammations in one, as pneumonia, nephritis, dys- 
entery, etc., would not be developed in the corres- 
ponding organs of the other, but he would only 
suffer from the symptomatic fever communicated 



ANATOMICAL PHENOMENON". 43 

through the circulation. Idiopathic disease, as 
typhoid fever, and zymotic disease, as small-pox, 
rubeola, poison, etc., would affect both simulta- 
neously through the vascular and lymphatic con- 
nections. The administration of all remedies, ac- 
ting through the systemic circulation, would influ- 
ence both alike in consequence of the two capil- 
lary anastomoses — first, and most important, in the 
liver; and second, in the connecting band." 

T. H. Tanner," M. D.,* reports a case of united 
twins, female, still-born. The attachment ex- 
tended " from the top of the thorax down to where 
the natural umbilicus should be. The thoracic cav- 
ity was common, containing tivo lungs, one heart 
and one sternum (breast-bone.) The abdominal 
cavity was common, e having one liver, one spleen, 
two kidneys, and one set of intestines/ one single 
cord and placenta. Second case, reported by J. Gr. 
Swayne, M. D.f Sex, male. The union extended 
from the umbilicus to the top of the thorax. There 
was one sternum and four clavicles, one thoracic 
cavity ivith a pericardium, containing tivo separate 
perfect hearts, one venous connection through a 
large branch connecting the right vena innomi- 
nata of one, with the left vena innominata of the 
other. In the abdomen there was a single dia- 
phragm, one common liver, one umbilical cord hav- 
ing one vein and four arteries. All the other or- 
gans in both cavities were duplicated. 

Third ease, by W. Wills, Esq.J Sex, male : child- 

* See Obstetrical Transactions, Vol. n. 
t See Obstetrical Transactions, Vol. II. 
tSee Obstetrical Transactions, Vol. VT. 



44 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

ren were well developed, and connected from the 
upper part of the thorax down to the umbilicus. 
Umbilical cord double and in one sheath entered 
the cavity between them at the band of union ; one 
large single liver, one gall bladder ivith two biliary 
ducts and one large spleen. TJie intestinal canals 
and all other abdominal and thoracic viscera id ere 
double and perfect." 

An article in the New York Times of April 4th, 
1869, refers to several cases of united twins, one, a 
case described by Dr. Berry, of two girls who lived 
to be seven years old. "Food taken by the one nour- 
ished the other, but they were very different in 
character, and one sometimes woke while the other 
slept. 

" Of twins who have lived united back to back, 
the best known instance is that of the two Hunga- 
rian sisters, Helen and Judith, who were thus fixed ; 
they were born in 1701, and died at Presburg in 
1723, aged 23. Some disorders they had separately ; 
others, as small-pox or measles, together. Judith, 
always feeble, sank under disease of the head and 
chest ; Helen, who preserved her health well to the 
last, felt her own strength suddenly fail, though 
her speech remained entire, and after a brief death 
struggle, she died with her. Sir J. Simpson saw, 
in 1856, two female children — Amelia and Christi- 
na — then about 5 years of age, united exactly as 
Helen and Judith. They are said to be now living 
in the Southern States of America. They were 
born in Columbo County, South Carolina. Al- 
though united back to back, and completely fused, 



ANATOMICAL PHENOMENON. 45 

they were very different in dispositions and tem- 
peraments. When they quarrelled more bitterly 
than usual, they backed at each other with their 
elbows and knocked with their sinciputs. They 
ran and walked with facility, one backward and 
the other forward ; and notwithstanding their par- 
tial community of body, one was sometimes seen 
to eat while the other was oyerpowered with sleep. 
Sir James Simpson figures and describes in the 
Journal, other twins, partial and complete ; as Eita- 
Christina, who, between thirty and forty years ago, 
attracted the deep interest of the medical profession 
in Paris ; and Lazarus and John Coloredo, born at 
Genes in 1617, who were twenty-eight years of age 
when last seen at Basle by Bartholinus. The at- 
tached and imperfectly developed twin, John, hangs 
in the drawing, as in life, head downward from the 
lower part of the chest of Lazarus." 

(17.) In the Eichmond and Louisville Medical 
Journal is described the case of a child born on 
the 12th of May, 1868, in Lincoln County, Tenn. 

This child, Josephine Myrtle , is possessed 

of one head and one trunk, like those of a liying, 
well-developed, healthy, active infant of about 5 
weeks, (June 16, 1868,) whilst the lower portion 
of her body is divided into the members of two 
distinct individuals. Professors Joseph Jones, M. 
D., and Paul F. Eve, M. D., (University of Nash- 
ville,) who examined this child, declare their belief, 
"that the lower portion of the spinal column is 
divided or cleft, and that there are two pelvic arches 
supporting the four limbs which are situated upon 



46 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

the same plane," and from which point below, all 
the organs are double, there being two pelvic arches 
— four legs — and in every respect fully duplicated, 
as the more particular description by the above- 
named professors fully corroborates, but which it 
is not necessary here to give. 

The author has in his possession photographs of 
this interesting case, from which the following 
engraving has been produced : 




Josephine Myrtle C , born the 12th of May, 1868, in Lincoln 

County, Tennessee. 

From the commentaries of Sigibert we are told* 
of the child born at Emmaus in the reign of 
Emperor Theodosius, single below the chest (or 
chests), with four arms and two heads. The two 
heads were not better than one, for they were 
differently affected ; one might be crying while the 
other laughed, one feeding, the other sleeping; 

* Harpers' Weekly. 



AKATOMICAL PHEKOMEKOK. 47 

sometimes they quarreled, and there was a fight 
of the two pairs of arms. This child is said to 
haye lived two years, one part dying four days 
before the other, which was killed by the decay of 
its inseparable neighbor. Cardan tells us of a 
Milanese girl with two heads, in all other respects 
single, except that she was found after death to 
have two stomachs. Among the two-headed women 
was one in Bavaria, aged twenty-six, of whose two 
faces one was pretty, the other ugly. In the time 
of Francis the First of France there was a man 
with two heads, whose second, head grew out of 
the trunk of his body, and was carried under his 
waistcoat. This head had a secret hunger of its 
own, that no food taken by the visible mouth would 
satisfy. 

" Cases somewhat similar to the above have oc- 
curred and been described. Kokitansky refers to 
two completely distinct bodies conjoined at their 
ossa sacraor coccyges, as in the well-known Hun- 
garian sisters, Helen and Judith, born in 1701, 
who survived their twenty-second year. 

" Geoffrey St. Hilaire, alludes to cases of a trunk 
with two heads, some even Janus-like, having four 
upper and four lower extremities. 

(18.) "The case, however, recalled most vividly 
by Josephine M. C— — , is that of Rita- Christina, 
well-known in Europe, and accurately described m 
this country years ago, by Prof. Meigs. In this 
wonderful instance, there were two heads, two 
necks, four arms, out only two legs ; and was thus 
the reverse of our case. From the umbilicus down, 



48 LATERAL HALVES 

there was one well-formed child, out above this, all 
the organs ivere doubled ; in reality there existed two 
beings. The rectum and bladder were common to 
both, but all else in the trunk was double and dis- 
tinct. One would sleep while the other played, etc., 
for they had two spinal marrows, tiuo brains, two 
hearts, but the last two occupied a common pericar- 
dium. Unfortunately, after surviving a little over 
a year, one sickened and died, when the other, then 
in health, instantly expired. 

" Eita and Christina were born in Sardinia, 1829, 
and described by Dr. DeMichaelis, Professor of Sur- 
gery in the Eoyal University of Sassari, and lived 
eighteen months." 



LITERAL HALYES OF THE BRAIN AND BODY. 

(19.) " The body consists of two halves, so equal 
and alike, that it has often been said, that each 
person consists of two separate individuals." (Dra- 
per.) This seems plain from the evidence adduced 
in its support, and is accepted in the text books of 
physiological science. It is not this hemispherical 
doubleness that is proposed to be proved in this 
work, for that, the author believes, is already rec- 
ognized, but it is that the hemispheres may be 
doubled within themselves, tripled, etc., duality 
not being the definite limit of their plurality. 
And from the preceding facts presented in this 
work, it ought not to be supposed that the reader 



OF THE BRAIN AND BODY. 49 

need be greatly startled at this assertion. But, 
before proceeding to show this more fully, let us 
first examine the already recognized principle of 
duality of man by the two like hemispheres ; and 
in referring to authority, Prof. Draper will be 
chiefly respected, because of the quite uniform 
precision of his observations and conclusions. 

Great Longitudinal Fissure. 




The above diagram shows the two lateral halves 
of the brain, which is the recognized organ of the 
mind, the great longitudinal fissure dividing it 
into two hemispheres. 

Also the body entire has its two symmetrical 

halves, the cranial and spinal nerves coming forth 

by pairs to their distribution on both sides of 

the body. Or, rather, we may with propriety 

3 



50 LATEEAL HALVES 

regard the spinal chord as the primary organ 
and seat of life, as evidenced by the order of 
its development and by many physiological facts ; 
and the brain is a development on the spinal 
chord. The great " longitudinal fissure " shows 
by its division the two lateral halves of the 
brain. 

Wigan has been referred to in " Human Physi- 
ology," who studied the duality of the mind and 
brain through its two hemispheres. " Examining 
those organs which, by reason of the elaborateness 
of their mechanism and principles of action, enable 
us to determine with satisfactory precision the 
function discharged by each one of the members of 
the pair, as in the case of the eye or the ear, we 
may come to the following conclusions : Each is a 
distinct organ in itself, capable of its meeting the 
requirements of the economy in a sufficiently satis- 
factory manner, and therefore forms a distinct 
whole; but the pair can likewise act simulta- 
neously, re-enforcing, to a certain degree, each 
other's power, though in this double action there 
by no means arises a double intensity of effect. 
The closure of one ear to a sound does not dimin- 
ish the loudness by one half, nor does the shutting 
of one eye reduce to one half the brightness of a 
light : but, though there is not such a doubling of 
effect when both eyes or both ears are employed, 
there is a degree of precision in the resulting in- 
dication which is not to be gained by the use of 
one of these organs alone. In such a double organ, 
then, the result is not so much a heightening of the 



OF THE BKAIK AND BODY. 51 

final impression as the giving to it of a greater de- 
gree of precision. 

" Moreover, each organ seems to exert a compen- 
sating influence over its fellow in any deficiencies 
or imperfections it may possess. Thus, it is rare 
that both eyes are of an equal optical goodness, as 
most individuals will find on making a personal 
examination; but in vision with both eyes, the 
faults of the more imperfect one are merged in the 
indications of the better, and the same might be 
remarked of the ear ; from which it would appear 
that this doubleness of organs, is rather for the 
purpose of introducing a principle of compensation 
than one of conspiring action, the object intended 
to be gained being a justness of perception rather 
than an increase of effect. 

" These observations apply to double organs in 
their normal states, or, if not their normal, their 
habitual ones: but if to the eye, for example, a 
temporary disturbance is given, as by pressure, 
which renders its optical axis oblique, the fellow or- 
gan being permitted to retain its usual position, 
double sight is the result. It is true that, in the 
habitual divergence of strabismus, such is not the 
effect, one of the images disappearing, or perhaps 
the mind accommodating itself to the habitual con- 
dition, combines the two into one. These circum- 
stances indicate that each member of a double 
organ can, under conditions of disturbance, exer- 
cise an independent and even opposing action to its 
fellow. 

" It has by some been supposed that the mind pays 



52 LATEEAL HALVES 

attention to the impressions of only one of the pair 
of organs at a time : thus, that we see the images 
furnished only by one eye, though we can with 
very great quickness direct attention to those fur- 
nished by the other, and therefore, deceived by the 
rapidity with which this alternation of attention 
can be accomplished, our belief in the synchronous 
use of both organs is an error. If two differently 
colored objects, such as differently tinted wafers, 
be so placed as to be separately and yet simulta- 
neously viewed by both eyes, the mind vainly at- 
tempts to combine the two images together. "We 
do not see the resulting form of green tint, but we 
see, according as our attention is given to the right 
or left, a blue or a yellow, if these have been the 
colors of the wafers, and these colors can quickly 
merge into one another, like dissolving views. 
There is a simple experiment which serves to sup- 
port this view, and which any one may readily 
make. If the open hand be placed along the nose, 
so as to divide the right eye from the left, and we 
look upon the surface of a uniformly-illuminated 
sheet of paper covered with writing, it will be 
found that we can only read with one eye at a time, 
but that the mind can with great rapidity deter- 
mine which eye it will use. In this little experi- 
ment, we have, moreover, the means of estimating 
the relative sensitiveness of the two eyes, and other 
of their optical peculiarities ; th as it will be com- 
monly remarked that, though the paper be, as we 
have said, uniformly illuminated, that part of it 
which is regarded by one eye is brighter than that 



OF THE BEAIK AND BODY. 53 

seen by the other, this being due to a difference in 
their sensibility. It will also frequently occur that 
the two portions of the page will present different 
shades of tint, the one, perhaps, being a faint green- 
ish gray, while the other is of a yellowish white, 
the proper color given to it by the candle or lamp 
by which it is seen. 

" In this feature of double construction the brain 
itself participates, presenting a right and left half 
approaching one another in form, without being 
absolutely identical. Much, therefore, of what has 
been said respecting the mutual relations of the 
right and left eye, and the right and left ear, must 
apply to the right and left hemispheres of the brain. 
Nor can there he any doubt that each hemisphere is 
a distinct organ, having the power of carrying on 
its functions independently of its fellow ; that, 
though each can thus act separately, both can act 
simultaneously; and judging from the cases that 
have just been presented, it would seem that we 
are justified in inferring that the common action 
of the two hemispheres is not for the purpose of a 
heightening of effect, but only for greater precision, 
and that in the same manner, as it is a rare thing 
to find two eyes or two ears of equal goodness, so 
also it is unusual to have two hemispheres which 
are precisely alike. The defects of the one may be 
compensated by the superiorities of the other, and 
thus a mean result be attained ; and as one eye or 
one ear can, under the proper circumstances, over- 
power its fellow, so likewise can one hemisphere of 
the brain, except in certain cases, which have been 



54 LATEKAL HALVES 

somewhat imaginatively described as insubordina- 
tion of one of the hemispheres, when insanity is 
the result, the healthy half being unable to control 
the diseased one ; and for this reason, we often ob- 
serve of the insane that they have synchronously, 
or, at all events, in a very rapid alternation, two 
distinct trains of thought, and consequently, two 
distinct utterances, each of which may, so to speak, 
be perfectly continuous and even sane by itself, but 
the incongruities that arise from the mingling of 
the two betray the condition of such persons. In 
this case doubleness of action is seen in its most 
exaggerated aspect, but in a less degree, it may be 
remarked, in the thinking operations of those 
whose minds are perfectly sound. Thus, there is 
no student but must have observed, when busily 
engaged in reading, that his mind will wander off 
to other things, though he may mechanically cast 
his eyes over page after page, and the same may 
occur in listening to a lecture or sermon. 

" The overcoming of this insubordination of one 
of the hemispheres may, to a very considerable de- 
gree, be accomplished by education, of which one 
of the chief results is that it exercises us in the 
habit of thinking of one thing at a time, of think- 
ing therefore without confusion, and of arriving 
at conclusions ivith precision and decision. And 
these considerations should also, in Dr. Wigan's 
view, be our chief guide in the cure of insanity, 
doing all in our power to invigorate the action of 
the healthy hemisphere, and enable it to subdue 
the insubordination of the diseased one. If both 



OF THE BEATN" AND BODY. 55 

hemispheres are diseased, the case is almost hope- 
less. 

" Of the independent and yet complete action of 
each of the cerebral hemispheres, we have abund- 
ant and interesting proof. Mental operations can 
be carried on in a profoundly diseased state of one 
of these organs, as multitudes of well-authenticated 
cases attest — nay, eyen when the lesion has gone 
so far as to amount to an absolute and entire dis- 
organization of one of the hemispheres. Similar 
evidence is also furnished by these interesting cases 
in which, by accident, as by gunshot wound, de- 
struction of one side has occurred. 

" Even in a state of health we have numerous 
examples of this independent action of each hem- 
isphere. While engaged in ordinary pursuits which 
imply a continued mental occupation, we are oc- 
casionly troubled with suggestions of a different 
kind. A strain of music, or even a few notes, may 
be perpetually obtruding, and such an occurrence 
we could scarcely explain save upon the principle 
of the separate action of these organs, the one in- 
terfering with the other. That precision which we 
have remarked as arising from the conjoint use of 
two eyes and two ears, is doubtless also attained 
where the two hemispheres are acting in unison. 
We can, moreover, voluntarily permit one to rest 
while the other continues its duty, as we can vol- 
untarily make use of one eye, disregarding the in- 
dications of the other ; but where it is necessary to 
execute a critical comparison, or arrive at an accu- 
rate judgment of things, both hemispheres are 



56 LATERAL HALYES 

brought into action, as are both eyes when we in- 
tently consider an object. 

"Among other phenomena, Dr. Wigan calls at- 
tention to the operation of castle -building, as it is 
designated, illustrating the voluntary manner in 
which we permit one hemisphere to act, presenting 
fanciful delusions ; the other, as it were, watching 
with satisfaction the operation, and in this respect 
lending itself to it. Not that for a moment we 
suppose there is any truth in the ideas suggested, 
and in this the phenomenon differs essentially from 
that of dreaming, in which it never occurs to us 
that the scenes and actions are unsubstantial. 

" Still more strikingly do those singular cases, 
which from time to time present themselves to the 
physician, of double or alternate consciousness, il- 
lustrate this isolated function of the hemispheres. 
In some of these, which have been carefully observ- 
ed and authentically recorded, each of these por- 
tions of the brain has continued its action for a 
period of days, or even weeks, and then, relapsing 
into a quiescent state, has been succeeded by the 
other, thus presenting, in some degree, an analogy 
of what is observed in ordinary cases of insanity, 
so far as the reciprocating action of the two organs 
is concerned, but differing in the period of dura- 
tion of their function; and thus, if one of them 
should have undergone deterioration, or have suf- 
fered lesion, so that it has been reduced to what 
might be termed an infantile state, the impressions 
formerly stored up in it having been for the most 
part lost, or there being an incapacity in it to make 



OP THE BEAIN AND BODY. 5? 

use of them, the patient will alternately exhibit 
what has been aptly termed child life and mature 
life. For a few days, or perhaps weeks, he will 
conduct himself in the ordinary manner of an 
adult, reading, reasoning, and acting, and then, 
for a similar period, will pass into a condition in 
which he does not even know his letters, and rea- 
sons and acts like a child. These phenomena of 
alternate or double intellection are interesting in 
the highest degree." 

But here the author would suggest some criti- 
cism on Dr. Wigan's views, which is, that these 
differences of phenomena result from differences in 
action merely of the two hemispheres of the brain. 
But will such a hypothesis, which institutes such 
limitation, be sustained by the office of these two 
hemispheres ? The usual action of these two hem- 
ispheres is in conjunction, or if not synchronously 
for precision, then in alternation to afford mutual 
rest, participating almost uniformly in develop- 
ment, from the mental actions and experiences that 
advance toward age. Then, as it appears to the 
author, we must look for the cause of the pheno- 
mena of alternate mature-life and child -life not in 
the two symmetrical hemispheres of the brain, but 
rather in the plurality of the entire brain doubled 
within itself, where one by its latency for the most 
of the time, would, whenever it should become ac- 
tive, not only exhibit more youthful thoughts and 
habits, but also, even a. change of emotional and 
moral character, appearing like a change of person- 
ality. — But this subject will be referred to again. 
3* 



58 



LATEEAL HALVES 



The following diagram illustrates the exceeding- 
ly interesting relation of the optic nerves of the 
two eyes to the two hemispheres of the brain, by 
which it will be seen that either eye separately, or 
both conjointly, may conyey impressions to either 
one or both hemispheres. 




c c, Tract of outer nerve fibres ; d d, tract of central fibres ; e e, tract 
of inter-retinal fibres ; //, tract of inter-cerebral fibres. 



OF THE BKAItf A1TD BODY. 



59 



The optic nerves have their anterior fibres, their 
central or interior fibres, and their posterior fibres. 
The anterior fibres are commissuras between the 
two retinae, their tract being denoted in the pre- 
ceding diagram by the line e e. The interior fibres 
have their tracts denoted by the lines d d, each 
crossing to the opposite hemisphere of the brain. 
The posterior fibres have their tract denoted by 
the line//', crossing from one hemisphere of the 
brain to the other, being a commissure between 
the two optic thalami. This posterior region of 
the complex commissura is regarded by Prof. J. 
"W. Draper as being independent of the other 
parts. It exists* in animals which have no optic 
nerve, as the mole. 

According to Metz,* the optic nerves of the two 
sides partially cross ; it contains two kinds of 
fibres, the external, which proceed from the brain 
to the external part of the retina (on the same 
side), and which do not decussate. The direction 
of these lines are denoted 
by the lines c c in the dia- 
gram on the preceding 
page, and also by c c, in 
the diagram of the chiasma 
here given, which shows 
the direction of all the nerve fibres. The central 
fibres of these same nerves, or what is called the 
optic tracts, as before stated, cross in the chiasma, 
going to the hemispheres of the brain on the op- 
posite sides, as shown at d d. 

* Anatomy and Histology of the Human Eye. 




60 



LATEKAL HALVES 



The following cut, from Metz's work, shows the 
two kinds of fibres of the optic tracts, the external 
which proceed to the external part of the retina 
and which do not decussate, and the central which 
cross in the chiasm; but in this cut the inter- 
retinal and the inter-cerebral fibres are not shown. 




m a a, External fibres of the optic nerve and of the retina coming 
from the corresponding hemispheres ; b b, internal fibres of the same 
nerve which originate in the opposite hemispheres ; c c, chiasma, 
witb inter-crossing of the optic fibres ; d, e, optic tracts, &c. 



OE THE BRAIN AND BODY. 



61 



But Metz shows the chiasma complete, with tho 
directions of all its fibres, in another diagram, 
made so as to show them distinctly, as here pre- 
sented. 

COMMISSURA OP THE OPTIC NERVES. 




O, is the commissura arcuata anterior, the inter-retinal nerve 
fibres ; B B, the commissura arcuata posterior or inter-cerehral 
nerve fibres ; P P and Q Q, are the commissura cruciata, showing 
the crossing of the optic tracts from each eye to the opposite hemi- 
sphere of the brain ; M M and N A", show the course of the external 
optic nerve fibres which do not decussate but lead from each hemi- 
sphere of the brain to the external part of the retina of the eye on 
the corresponding side. 

Prof. J. W. Draper, in his Text Book of Physio- 
logy, presents a very concise statement, recognizing 
the result of the inter-retinal nerve fibres, which 
virtually make the two retinas as one encased ivith- 
in the other. He says, that " while the proper op- 
tic tubules of the right eye go to the left brain, and 
of the left eye to the right brain, the anterior band 
of commissural tubules brings the two eyes into a 
special relation with one another, the right side of 
one eye corresponding with the right of the other, 
and the left with the left ; or, to put the same state- 
ment under a more simple, yet a more instructive 



62 LATERAL HALVES 

form, the outer side of one eye corresponds with, 
the inner of the other, and in this manner the two 
retinas become as if they were virtually encased, 
the one within the shell of the other. * * * * 
From this commissural arrangement it comes to 
pass that each retinas possesses regions of symmetry 
with the other, and on this singleness of vision de- 
pends. Each point of the outer portion of the re- 
tinas of the right eye has its points of symmetry in 
an inner portion of the left, and when from a dis- 
tant object rays fall on these symmetrical points, 
that object will be seen single." 

In looking at a single object each' eye sees a some- 
what different image, because as the eyes are separ- 
ate a certain distance, the left eye sees more of the 
left portion, and the right eye more of the right por- 
tion of the object; and these two different images, 
on the two retinas, being merged into one as the 
mind recognizes it, the idea of solidity is obtained, 
and also, in other respects, a more perfect compre- 
hension of the image. 

If two objects, nearly alike, be situated so that 
by turning the eyes inward in the position where 
they would be directed so that each object would 
be seen by the eye on the opposite side, and thus, 
the line of vision of each eye crossing so as to 
make a focus where both images would occupy the 
same place, a more vivid or expressive feature is 
given to the object from plurality, as two are now 
made one to the view; and yet, by keeping the 
eyes turned in that same direction, and obscuring 
the rays from entering one eye, the other eye sees 



OF THE BKAI2* AOT BODY. 



63 



then the less expressive 
form of the one image un- 
combined with the other; 
and by changing so as to 
obscure only the other eye, 
the other image is shown 
in its less expressive and 
less comprehended form. 

The accompanying dia- 
gram shows how two im- 
ages may be made to com- 
bine in the vision ; and by 
a little practice, keeping 
the eyes thus fixed, the 
experimenter can let his 
mind, (through the eye,) 
view either one or the 
other of the images exclu- 
sively, even without ob- 
scuring the eye not desired 
to recognize the image. 

The reader's attention is now respectfully called 
to renewed consideration of those cases where por- 
tions of the body are duplicated, such as the lower 
extremities from the pelvis downwards, as shown 
on page 46 ; and also, to the duplicatures of the 
upper extremities, such as one body having two 
heads and four arms, or such as two beings, twins, 
partially united, having various internal organs 
of the chest and abdomen in common, (page 38.) 

Eeferring to the case of Josephine Myrtle C , 

(page 46,) the duplication exists in reality not only 




64 PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

from the sacrum downwards, forming two pelvic 
arches and four legs, but also the nerves" of each 
limb have their extension through the spinal 
chord even to the brain. In truth, then, there are 
two entire bodies, but one of them is enclosed 
within the other, from the sacrum upwards ! 

The description on pages 39 and 40, shows two 
livers united into one. There was but one umbil- 
ical vein, u, to nourish the two beings with mater- 
nal blood ; yet, there were two hepatic veins, one 
belonging to one, and the other to the other per- 
sonality. Also, on page 43, there is reference 
to united twins, having thoracic and abdominal 
cavities common, with lungs, heart, liver, spleen, 
kidneys and intestines in common; and there 
was one single umbilical chord and placenta, 
these were duplicated within themselves; also, 
(page 43,) another case where the united twins 
had one thoracic cavity with a pericardium con- 
taining two separate perfect hearts ; and in the 
abdomen there was a single diaphragm, and one 
common liver, 

Now, if two livers can be encased within each 
other as one, and lungs, and kidneys, etc., why 
cannot brains be encased within brains, two entire 
hemispheres of the brain within two other entire 
hemispheres? And even as the upper portions of 
the body are thus sometimes encased while the low- 
er are separate, so are the lower thus sometimes 
encased together while the upper are separate, as 
shown page 47 (fig. 18) Rita Christina. 

Examining the following diagram of the nervous 



PLUEALITT OF PEKSOINALITY. 65 

system, as all the neryes lead to the brain, it is 
plain that if the body could be double from a, 
downwards, it would not be impossible for it to be 



double from l, downwards, or c, or d, or even from 
the brain, e, downwards, making two distinct bodies, 
which would be twins, as is often the case, and 
all maryel at an end. 



66 PLUKALITY OP PEESOKALITT. 

The mental phenomena presented in the case of 

Miss E , on page 12, show that there were two 

brains, one enclosed within the other, but one hav- 
ing been inactive or latent for many years till the 
paroxysm occurred which aroused ft to its first 
dawn of receiving impressions from the outer 
world. 

There are too many difficulties in the way for 
the mere duality of the hemispheres of the brain to 
afford explanation of the phenomena there pre- 
sented, for one hemisphere could not well remain 
infantile without also remaining undeveloped in 
size, for the experiences of thought come easy and 
natural to the developing brain, just as muscular 
exercise comes easy and natural to the developing 
body. Also, if one hemisphere of the brain had been 
mentally quiescent, and therefore, to a degree un- 
developed, the side of the body therewith con- 
nected by nerves would also to a degree remain 
undeveloped ; but no notice of such a condition is 
presented, which would have been noted if such a 
condition had existed. 

That the two hemispheres of the brain may act 
separately or together is quite well established, but 
not in such a manner as to account for the phe- 
nomena of alternate mature-life and child-life. 
Then we must look further for a cause, which is, 
as the author avers, in the plurality of the entire 
hemispheres of the brain. 

Now, if one brain be enclosed within another, 
and both be active, so as to give greater precision 
of thought, (intelligence), we ought to look for a 



PLUKALITY OF PERSONALITY. 67 

greater number of convolutions of the brain to 
supply more surface of the gray cineritious sub- 
stance, which is the oxydizable material necessary 
to the construction of thoughts. 

Now, it is considered as established in the anat- 
omy and physiology of the brain in their relation 
to the power of the mind, that the greater the 
number of the convolutions of the brain, and hence 
its greater surface of cineritious matter, the greater 
the brain power. 

Now, what is train poiver ? It is not merely 
thought, for a brain may think very hard and long, 
and still think wrong. Merely thinking hard does 
not build the best ships, nor determine beforehand 
astronomical phenomena. Thinking with pre- 
cision, and long with precision, is drain power. 

ISTow, as regards the gray matter of the convo- 
lutions of the brain, Sir C. Bell, says: "I have 
never seen disease general on the surface of the 
hemispheres without derangement of the mind." In 
general paralysis, whose earliest symptom is some 
eccentricity or other mental aberration, Wilks re- 
cognizes "chronic change in the brain, especially 
the gray substance. — The wasted brain (convolu- 
tions) in delirium tremens, denotes a failure of 
brain power. 

"There can be no doubt that this portion of the 
brain, (cineritious substance,) is intimately con- 
nected with the intellectual operations/' — Wilks' 
Guy's Hospital Reports, 1856, {London.) 

" The observations of Prof. Wagner, who enjoyed 
several opportunities of examining the brains of 



68 PLUEALITY OF PERSONALITY. 

men endowed with great powers of intellect, seem 
to point to the conclusion that the more richly 
convoluted brains coexist with great intelligence." 
— See Turner on Convolutions of the Brain. 

"Now, if it be true that the superficial gray- 
matter is intimately connected with mental activ- 
ity, then it follows that the multiplicity of the con- 
volutions is connected with the developments and 
increase of intellectual capacity, the substratum of 
which is the increased quantity of gray matter." — 
See Carl Vogt, Lectures on Man. 

The case of Kev. E B , related on pages 

13 and 14, was of a nature to receive the following 
interpretations : First, If the two distinct minds 
reading the same page, " one in a plain matter-of- 
fact way, the other in a more than usually im- 
aginative way," were those merely of the two hem- 
ispheres of the brain, then we must conclude that 
the two hemispheres differed so much as to cause 
those differences in contemplating a subject; and 
we must also conclude that the inter-cerebral 
nerve-fibres, which unite the two brains through 
the optic commissura, had some temporary or- 
ganic lesion, so that the mental actions of the 
two hemispheres were not combined. But it 
is established that almost always the organs 
of one hemisphere have their counterpart in the 
other hemisphere, developed quite, or almost uni- 
formly, so that the matter-of-fact ivay of one hem- 
isphere would be more likely to be nearly the 
same matter-of-fact way of the other hemisphere. 
Therefore, would it not be more reasonable to con- 



PLUEALITY OF PEESOSTALITY. 69 

elude that in this case too, there were two entire 
brains, one enclosed within the other, or existing 
mutually together with proximity of their nerve 
cells, from which proceed their parallel neryes ? 
And if this was the condition, then both brains 
must have been developed to mature life, from ac- 
ting together, or in alternation, because he views 
the page not in one case, as an infantile or non- 
comprehending mind, but in each case as a mature 
mind, but differing only as differs the quality of 
those minds ; and the cause of the temporary re- 
cognition of the two separate minds may have been 
from some temporary interruption of the condition, 
whatever it may be, that causes them to act in psy- 
chological unity. From the context, in his relation 
of it, it is plain that he supposed the phenomena 
resulted from the two hemispheres of the brain 
only, because such had been the customary manner 
of explaining it. 

Psychological unity of two minds is not a myth. 
If two persons, in the same room, have their 
thoughts involuntarily following together on va- 
rious subjects, which is often found to be the case ; 
or if, as is professionally recognized, two brains 
or separate hemispheres can act either separately 
in alternation, or together in absolute unity, why 
cannot the same result follow from brain within 
brain ? 

Different personalities in the same individual 
may predominate separately, one for a time, and 
another for a time, not always acting together. 
As the different emotions and feelings of the thus 



70 PLUEAL1TY OF PERSONALITY. 

changed person are different, therewith the hand- 
writing also corresponds, and the effect is carried 
out, even throughout the entire organization. 
Some persons will notice that their handwriting is 
different at different times, not merely by a more 
steady hand at one time than another, but also 
by a changed handwriting, as though it were the 
expression of a different personality, for all the 
movements of the body express the mental qual- 
ities. (See page 105.) In the case of Miss R , 

on page 12, it is shown that in one state she pos- 
sessed fine powers of penmanship, while in the 
other she wrote a poor awkward hand. This cor- 
roborates what should be anticipated, that the ner- 
vous ramifications of the plural personalities run 
parallel to all parts of the body, where all the mus- 
cles and tissues are duplicated within themselves. 
The bible presents us, in the book of Nehemiah, 
some strange phenomena, which apparently resulted 
from no other cause than that of double person- 
ality, where there was not entire synchronous psy- 
chological unity of minds, or their nervous con- 
nections with muscles, of the tongue at least, 
causing confusion in their speech. Nehemiah says : 
" In those days saw I Jews that had married wives 
of Ashdod, of Amnion, and of Moab; and their 
children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and 
could not speak in the Jew's language, but accord- 
ing to the language of each people. And I con- 
tended with them and cursed them, and smote 
certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and 
made them swear by God, saying, ye shall not 



PLURALITY OF PERSONALITY. 71 

give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their 
daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves." — iVe- 
hemiah, chap. 13, ver. 23, 24 and 25. 

May not the above phenomena have been caused 
by some prominent and different peculiarities ex- 
isting, one kind in the Jews, and another kind in 
the Ashdodites, Ammonites and Moabites, and be- 
ing developed in the children in such a manner, 
that they would not synchronously harmonize in 
their action? And it would not be a strained 
conclusion, that possibly this want of lingual pre- 
cision, (stammering,) resulted from the knowledge 
by the parents that they had married in violation 
of governmental commands; and this knowledge 
assumed a mental force, causing this want of co- 
ordination in lingual expression in the offspring. 
See the case of the child who could not speak to 
its father, page 91. 

It is remarkable to consider, that those who have 
lost the memory- of portions of their experienced 
life by sickness or by severe accident, etc., are those 
whose history shows that they had removed from 
the place of their former experiences, and there- 
fore had become subjected to the changed influ- 
ences of different climate, customs, food, mental oc- 
cupations, thoughts, sometimes another language, 
and almost altogether another mode of life ; or, who, 
if not having removed, have certainly experienced 
all or many of these changes, excepting that of 
climate. (See case 3, page 14; case 6, page 20; case 
7, page 20 ; case 8, page 21 ; case 9, page 22 ; case 10, 
page 22 ; case related by Dr. xibercrombie, page 27.) 



72 



METAMOKPHOSIS. 



METAMORPHOSIS. 



It is a fact worthy of attention, that certain in- 
sects change their form and mode of life, making 
apparently an entire metamorphosis from one kind 
to that of another, and it may he appropriate here 
to particularize hy brief reference to the caterpillar 
and butterfly. 

The egg is laid by the butterfly, 
and the cut here represents that of 
the " Meadow Brown " species. It is 
shown highly magnified ; for the egg 
itself is so small that it would easily 
fall through a pin-hole, and the mi- 
croscope is necessary to reveal the delicate sculp- 
ture that beautifies its surface. From this egg 
is hatched a living, thinking, walking, eating and 
thriving animal ; it is not a butterfly, as was its 
parent, but it is a caterpillar, which this cut faith- 
fully represents. 





The caterpillar feeds on the leaves of certain 
plants, and is a great eater ; in twenty-four hours 
he will consume more than twice his own weight 
of food, and his growth is marvelously rapid, for 
in the course of one month he will have increased 



METAMOKPHOSIS. 73 

nearly ten thousand times his original weight on 
leaving the egg. 

The caterpillar changes its coat several times, 
which is called "moulting" The outer husk or 
skin comes off and is reproduced anew ; and not 
only that, hut what is additionally marvelous, the 
lining membrane of all the digestive passages and 
of the breathing tubes is also cast off and repro- 
duced anew ! 

But what is more marvelous still, is the change 
from the caterpillar to a butterfly. 

When this change is taken place, the caterpillar 
passes into an intermediate, helpless, 
motionless, death-like condition, which 
is called the Chetsalis or Pupa 
state. The form of the pupa of the 
Meadow Brown Butterfly, is shown by 
the accompanying diagram. 

Before the caterpillar assumes the chrysalis form, 
it has to throw off its own skin, carrying with it 
the whole of its legs, and the jaws too, leaving it- 
self a limbless and apparently helpless mass, its 
only prehensile organs being a few minute, almost 
imperceptible hooks on the end of the tail ; and 
by the aid of these, some varieties suspend them- 
selves, by the tail only, the head hanging freely in 
the air; other varieties attach themselves to the 
supporting object by the tail and also keep the head 
in an upright position, with a silken girdle looped 
round the waist — and the marvelously dexterous 
and slight-of-hand-like movements by which this 
is accomplished, excite the astonishment of the be- 
4 




74 METAMOBPHOSIS. 

holder. It has learned from the Great Teacher ; 
therefore, though executing this feat but once in 
its life, it is done in the most perfect manner. 

Though the history of the caterpillar and butter- 
fly is exceedingly interesting, yet brevity here is a 
necessity, because it is the transformation itself 
that is chiefly the pertinent fact to introduce into 
this treatise. 

Through the thin envelope of the chrysalis is 
shown in careful compactness, all the external or- 
gans of the butterfly. The antennas appear very 
conspicuous, folded alongside the legs ; the wings, 
yet unexpanded, are visible on each side, very 
small, yet distinctly seen with all their veinings ; 
and the spiracles or breathing holes are placed in 
a row on each side of the body. 

As the time required for the egg to hatch to a 
caterpillar varies much, according to temperature, 
from a few days, when laid in summer, to several 
months when laid in autumn, and which remain 
quiescent during winter, to hatch out in spring, 
so also, the duration of the chrysalis stage is great- 
ly variable, and is likewise dependent on difference 
of temperature. Thus, it is that one of our com- 
mon butterflies has been known to pass only seven 
or eight days in the chrysalis state in the heat of 
summer; then in the spring the change occupies 
a fortnight; but when the caterpillar enters the 
chrysalis state in autumn, the butterfly does not 
make its appearance till the following spring. 

Some learned naturalists have thought they have 
discovered that the butterfly in all its parts lies hid 



METAMORPHOSIS. 



75 



under the caterpillar's skin, and can be distin- 
guished under microscopical dissection, and have, 
therefore, considered that these changes should be 
viewed rather in the light of successive devel- 
opements and emancipations of the various or- 
gans than as their actual transformations. Cer- 
tainly, it is true that the quality of the vital prin- 
ciple which developes the butterfly, exists in the 
caterpillar. As regards the fact then, what matters 
it where is the precise point of time when that vi- 
tal principle is developed to the degree which 
shows, microscopically or to the naked eye, the 
nerves and other outlines of the butterfly. Then 
whether it is a series of developments or emancipa- 
tions, seems to be merely a difference of terms, the 
great fact remains with its undiminished wonder, 




that a mere creeping worm becomes gloriously 
changed to winged being, differing from the for- 
mer in habits, in food, and in every essential par- 
ticular, even as widely as any two creatures can 
well differ ; even as widely as a serpent from a bird. 



HEREDITARY INFLUENCES. 

(19.) Before elucidating the relation of .the preced- 
ing sections to the conclusions which are the especial 
subjects of this volume, the author thinks proper 
to refer to other yaried and recognized phenomena, 
and here would make brief reference to the law of 
hereditary influences ; not brief from want of field 
and multiplicity of facts, but from the want of oc- 
casion here to enlarge upon, and consume time on 
a subject, with which all people are so familiar, be- 
cause of the facts being constantly presented to uni- 
versal observation. 

That " like begets like " is a phrase that need not 
be continually asserted to be believed. The fea- 
tures, complexion, size, strength, voice, movements, 
appetites, passions, inclinations, idiosyncrasies, dis- 
eases, shape in its perfections and deformities, etc., 
are known to resemble the same in one or more of 
the individuals, in the line of ancestry ; and the 
resemblance is more like to be of those of whom 
they are more immediately descended, as of father 
and mother. 

Thomas Watson, M. D., Professor of the Princi- 
ples and Practice of Physic, Kings College, Lon- 
don, referring to a number of diseases, says that 
they occur "much more frequently in persons, some 
one or more of whose ancestors have suffered from 
them, than in other persons : the tendency is trans- 
mitted, is hereditary. 



HEREDITAEY IHFLUE^CES. 77 

That the circumstances of the parents do influ- 
ence the physical characters of the children, no 
one can doubt : it is matter of daily observation ; and 
one of the best possible illustrations of the fact is to 
be found in what are called family4ikenesses. We 
see children resembling their father, or their mo- 
ther; or both parents at once, as mulattoes. 

" Every one has heard of, or may remark in por- 
traits, the hereditary thick lip of the Imperial 
House of Austria. Many persons now living have 
had the opportunity of tracing the lineaments of 
our own Eoyal Eamily through at least three gene- 
rations. The sisters of one of our English dukes 
are remarkably handsome young women, and bear 
to this day a striking resemblance to the portraits 
of their beautiful ancestress, the celebrated Nell 
G-wyn. And independently of the general cast of 
features, we trace these family-likenesses in minute 
or unequivocal particulars, as the color of the hair 
and eyes, the shape of the limbs, the stature of the 
body, and so on ; nay, in more decided peculiarities 
than these, in points of unusual formation. You 
have heard, probably, of the American calculating 
boy, Zerah Colburn. A great number of individuals 
of his family, descended from a common ancestor, 
had six fingers and six toes instead of five. The 
peculiarity was transmitted through four successive 
generations ; and probably, could his pedigree have 
been further traced, through many more. 

" Haller gives an account of a web-footed family, 
descended from a mother in whom that configura- 
tion existed. There is now living in London, a 



78 HEREDITARY LNPLUEKCES. 

musical composer of some celebrity, in whose per- 
son nature has played a similar freak ; and whose 
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, were 
all web-footed before him. Beyond this point his 
information does not reach. I am indebted for 
the knowledge of this instance to one of my former 
pupils, Mr. Cooper of Grafton-street. 

" Not only the complexion, the features, the sta- 
ture of the parent, but the various successive phases 
of the parent's life, mental and corporal, of health 
and of decay, are often copied and repeated in the 
child. In the absence of disturbing agencies, the 
son attains maturity, becomes grey or bald, acquires 
a stoop or a round belly, loses his teeth and his 
memory at about the same age, and after the very 
same manner, with his father. Particular forms 
of degeneration and disease unfold themselves at 
similar periods in both ; and thus it is that certain 
maladies, the tendency to which is interwoven 
with the original texture of the body, are rightly 
deemed to be hereditary maladies." 

M. Mingot, of the Hopital de Chantelle, in the 
Gazette Held., November 6th, remarking upon he- 
reditary tongue-tie, states that " hereditary influ- 
ence may be observed in small details as well as in 
the general disposition of organs." He mentions 
the case of a lad fourteen years of age, whose tongue 
was kept down to the floor of the mouth in conse- 
quence of the short thick framum which extended 
to this point. The lad's mother had precisely the 
same defect, and of four children, three were born 
with the same state of the framum. 



HEKEDITARY INFLUENCES. 79 

The Medical and Surgical Reporter, of Philadel- 
phia, August 29th, 1868, refers to a case of heredi- 
tary hare-lip in a little girl five years old, lately 
brought by M. Demarquay to the attention of the 
Surgical Society of Paris. " The interest of the 
case lies in the fact that, in the family from the 
grandparents downward, eleven children have been 
born with hare-lip, or with a peculiar conformation 
of the lower lip ; namely, two openings on either 
side of the mesial lines, traversing the whole labial 
thickness, with a peculiar form of the lip itself." 

The Edinburgh Medical Journal mentions cases 
of hereditary cataract cured by operation by Ben- 
jamin Bell, F. E. C. S. E. The mother, who is 
now dead, had been operated on for this complaint 
at the age of fourteen, with some benefit. An older 
daughter, aged twenty-five, has very defective vis- 
ion from the same cause with the rest of the family. 
Her sister, aged seventeen, was born with defective 
sight, which became greatly aggravated at the age 
of six years : she was cured by an operation at the 
age of seventeen. A brother could see moderately 
well for several years after birth, but the cataract 
eventually became complete, and he was cured by 
an operation at the age of fifteen. Another brother 
was born blind, but was cured by an operation at 
the age of thirteen. — Monthly Medical Reprint, 
Oct., 1868. 

An able work on " Hereditary Descent," by 0. 
S. Fowler, and published by S. E. Wells, the phre- 
nologist, of this city, is very comprehensive upon 
this subject, illustrating by examples very satisfac- 



80 UNDERGROUND, OR 

torily, the many features -hereditary influence of 
which it treats, some of which are the follow- 
ing: Family likenesses, forms of body, muscular 
strength, physical debility, marks and excrescences, 
porcupine men, twenty-four fingers and toes, wens, 
flaxen locks, early baldness, deformities, gray hairs, 
length of life, beauty and all other physical quali- 
ties, gout and apoplexy, cancers and ringworms, 
dyspepsia aud heart affections, cutaneous affections, 
blindness, deafness, stammering, dizziness, fits, tic- 
doloreux, rheumatism, several diseases collectively, 
insanity, character and shape, races ; mental char- 
acteristics, as combativeness, destructiveness, ac- 
quisitiveness, cautiousness, approbativeness, etc.; 
excessive and deficient appetite, appetite for par- 
ticular things, cannibalism, love of particular kinds 
of property, propensity to commit given crimes, 
the haughty, overbearing spirit, love of liberty and 
ambition, specific moral faculties, benevolence, 
spirituality, constructiveness, order, specific intel- 
lectual talents, the musical passion, the reasoning 
powers, etc. The later works of Prof. S. E. Wells 
give a still enlarging interest to this subject. 



UNDERGROUND, OR LATENT PECULIARITIES. 

Peculiarities often pass one generation, being la- 
tent,, as it were, to reappear in the next, or a subse- 
quent generation. The work on Hereditary descent 
previously alluded to, gives interesting examples of 



LATENT PECULIARITIES. 81 

this kind. " Two of the children of P. E. of Wood- 
stock, Vermont, have little holes or issues just in 
front of their ears, which discharge during colds ; 
the father has none ; but, at the corresponding loca- 
tion, he has a little indentation the size of a 
pinhead. A sister has it, and her children. His 
father, through whom this mark descends, has only 
a slight indentation like that of his son, but his 
maternal grandmother has it. It therefore passes 
oyer one generation in his father and sisters, and 
two in himself and father, but reappears in the 
third — his children. 

" Mrs. H , of Boston has bright red hair, not 

one of her numerous family of children has it, and 
only one of her grandchildren, of whom she has a 
goodly number."' 

Mr. W , had red hair, yet every one of his 

children had dark hair, and all his grandchildren 
except two ; but his GEEAT-grandchildren all oyer 
the country are appearing with red hair. Many 
who know these descendants and their parents, and 
grandparents, but not their red-haired progenitor, 
wonder from what source they derive this peculi- 
arity. In these cases it lies dormant for two 
generations and appears only in the first and fourth. 

"At the Temperance House in Lowell, in 1843, 
the chambermaid had a cancer on her face. Her 
father had none, but his mother died of one, and she 
resembled this grandmother while he did not. Her 
uncle, however, resembled this grandmother — his 
mother — and had a similar cancer, as did two of 
4* 



82 UNDERGROUND, OR 

his children, who also resembled their father, and 
of course, grandmother and consin. 

In Professor Watson's lectures, delivered at Kings 
College, London, we find recognition of this very- 
interesting and "curious circumstance observable 
in regard to these family-liknesses, namely, that 
they may fail to appear in the child, and yet ap- 
pear in the grandchild : may skip over a genera- 
tion or two ; may, after lying dormant, break out, as 
it were, in some collateral branch of the family tree. 

"This not only proves that certain physical 
peculiarities may be transmitted, but it discloses 
this remarkable property, that peculiarities not 
presented nor possessed by the parent may never- 
theless be transmitted by him. And this evidently 
opens a wide field for the operation of hereditary 
tendencies. A person is not to consider himself 
as necessarily free from a disposition to consumption 
or to gout, because his parents have never shown any 
symptoms of those disorders. 

" When one parent only bears the transmissible 
tendency, the disease appears to be most apt to 
break out in the children who most resemble that 
parent in their physical conformation and appear- 
ance. Yet this is not a universal rule. I am ac- 
quainted with a gentleman who has lost several 
brothers or sisters by phthisis. The fatal disposi- 
tion is known to exist on his mother's side, while 
his father's pedigree is believed to be quite free 
from it. All the children that have hitherto become 
consumptive have resembled the mother in bodily 
configuration and features, except this gentleman, 



LATENT PECULIAKITIES. 83 

who is like his father's family, but who, neverthe- 
less, labors under unequivocal consumption. * 

"It becomes a very interesting, and a very 
important question, whether acquired peculiarities 
can be transmitted. I have been told, by a gentle- 
man attending the class, that he knew a man who, 
having been accidentally deprived of sight, after- 
wards propagated blind children. I believe how- 
ever such an event to be uncommon. Dr. Prichard 
is of opinion that all original or connate bodily 
peculiarities tend to become hereditary, while 
changes in the organic structure of the individual 
from external causes during life, end with him, 
and have no obvious influence on his progeny. 

" I need scarcely say a word respecting the im- 
portance to medical men, and indeed to all men, of 
a knowledge of these hereditary dispositions. Such 
knowledge ought to regulate, in some degree, the 
choice of persons wishing so marry. Where both 
parents have a decided tendency to any complaint, 
there will be a double probability of a diseased 
offspring. Lawful intermarriages between mem- 
bers of the same family are often highly objection- 
able on the same score. Any inherent defect or 
morbid propensity is aggravated by what cattle- 
dealers call ' breeding in and in/ " 



* " This gentleman, an eminent London physician, has died since 
this lecture was given." 



84 MAKKIAGES OF COKSA^GUIKITT 



MARRIAGES OF CONSANGUINITY. 

(20.) Previously in this yolume is shown that 
the offspring inherits the peculiarities of their pa- 
rents, grandparents, etc., and it is not in truth op- 
posed to this law that marriages of near relatives 
cause the offspring generally to be feebler in mind 
and body than their parents. Indeed, instead of 
considering this state of things an exception, we 
ought rather to look for this result, because we 
must consider that there are two laws besides that 
bear upon this subject. 

1. It is a law that children inherit not only from 
one or both parents, but also from grandparents 
and great-grandparents. 

2. It is a law that marriages of unlike persons 
improve the progeny in physical and mental en- 
dowments. Therefore, when the marriages are 
between relatives, as the children usually inherit 
the characteristics more of their parents than their 
grandparents; then, if near relatives marry, it is 
plain that the resources of this inheritance are nar- 
rowed down — are become more limited — and the 
result is exactly what we ought to expect. It is well 
known that domestic animals are improved by 
crossing the breed, and that they are deteriorated 
" by breeding in and in." And this law extends not 
only throughout the animal kingdom, but to plants 
also. 

Illustrative cases of the effects of intermarrying 



RESTEICT AXD DIMINISH TITAL RESOURCES. 85 

with blood relations are given extensively by 
Josiah Coffin, from which are here condensed the 
substance of a few. 

N. P , of W , married his cousin; had 

three children; all weak in intellect; one was 
clump-footed, another had but one eye. Mr. and 

Mrs. E , were cousins ; had two children ; one 

weak in intellect, the other almost an idiot. A 

family in N. B , Mass., where were a number 

of foolish children, were the offspring of cousins. 
The Eev. Dr. Dufield, formerly of Philadelphia, 
mentioned two or three families in the interior of 
Pennsylvania, who had intermarried, to keep their 
property among themselves, for several generations, 

till their, posterity were nearly idiots. L. H , 

of N" , Mass., married his second cousin, and 

had one daughter who was nearly an idiot. S. 

L , of N , Mass., married his second cousin ; 

had ten children; all living, 1841; four of them 
were unable to walk ; were hauled about in car- 
riages designed for that purpose, and one of these 
was deaf and dumb ; another became helpless from 
numbness beginning at the extremities and ex- 
tending ; the others grew lame in the same man- 
ner. In the town of P , N. Y., where the 

parents were cousins, all of their ten children 
were destitute of the ordinary powers of under- 
standing. Mr. E. S , of Mass., married his 

cousin ; they were both of strong mind, firm nerve, 
and sound health ; they had seven daughters and 
one son ; three of the daughters were " deranged," 
the rest were of feeble health, and very nervous. 



86 MARKIAGES OF CONSANGUINITY 

Mr. P , of B , Mass., married liis second 

cousin, and their oldest child is too deficient in 

mind to take care of himself. J. P , of 

W , married his cousin, and one of their 

children died an idiot : two sons died at the age 
of twenty-three, of feeble bodies and irritable 
minds; and one girl had diseased eyes: some 
of the boys were club-footed, wry-necked, etc. 

Mr. E , of Mass., married his cousin ; had five 

daughters and three sons; one of the daughters 
was an idiot, painful to behold ; two of the other 
daughters are foolish, the other two are weak : one 
son was weak-minded, and had been lame: one 
son ran away with the town's money ; the other 
son was a worthy, upright man, but was unfor- 
tunate in all his undertakings. Many other simi- 
lar cases were given by Mr. Coffin. Prof. Fowler, 
has given many cases illustrative of this law, and 
a few of them will here be referred to. 

C. W married his cousin, and of his six child- 
ren, three were deaf and dumb. Mr. B of JST. H., 

married his cousin, and had eight children, four 
of which died early ; one kept his cradle till five 
years old, when it died ; three had moderate ca- 
pacities, two were complete idiots, and one, the 
only bright one, ha<i no legs, and only a stub of 
the right arm. By a second marriage, Mr. B. had 

two bright children. Mr. N and his cousin, 

both intelligent, married, and of their seven child- 
ren, three were crazy, two very weak in intellect, 
one was merely passable, and one was fair. Mr. Fos- 
ter, who taught in the deaf and dumb asylum, 



KESTKICT AND DIMINISH VITAL RESOURCES. 87 

Philadelphia, stated, that of seven children of first 
cousins whom he knew, six were idiots, and one 
mute but intelligent; and of another family, two 
of the children were mute idiots, and three others 
were mute but intelligent. 

Mrs. Maurice, of Boston, said that while living 
in a neighboring town, the strange and foolish 
speeches of some of her son's schoolmates, as re- 
ported by him, arrested her attention, and inquiry 
disclosed the fact that they were made by the child- 
ren of cousins and that out of five pairs who had 
married cousins, four had idiotic offspring, and the 
children of several of the others were not consid- 
ered intelligent. 

In the town of A , N. Y., Prof. Fowler ex- 
amined the heads of two idiots, the offspring of 
cousins. That of the eldest measured only nine- 
teen inches, though twenty years old, and of the 
youngest only seventeen — less than infants' heads. 
They could barely swallow, but could neither feed 
themselves nor walk. One of this unfortunate 
family had just died, and another some time pre- 
viously, both total idiots. Only one escaped either 
idiocy or death in infancy, and this one had barely 
sense enough to take care of himself. 

The many other cases which are well authenti- 
cated, given by Prof. Fowler and others, need not 
be presented here, as these should suffice. 

The Medical and Surgical Reporter, of July 
11th, 1863, (Philadelphia,) has the following im- 
pressive illustration oi this law: "A paper was 
read from Dr. Bailey, Military Physician to the 



88 MATEENAL IMPRESSIONS. 

French army, at Kome, containing some facts tend- 
ing to confirm the injurious effects of marriages 
between relatives, effects, it appears, which may re- 
main dormant until the second generation. One 
of the cases quoted was that of a Frenchman and 
a German, the former remarkable for his intellec- 
tual powers. Of his three sons, only one, the 
youngest, is in a normal state, the eldest being de- 
formed, and the second, deaf and dumb. The 
fourth child, a daughter, is half an idiot. The fa- 
ther was born of cousins -ger main. In another case 
of marriage between cousins, the mother had seve- 
ral still-born children, and then others that were 
deformed and died soon. The only surviving one 
is rickety and otherwise affected with disease. In 
a third case, two children were born both weak 
and stupid." 



MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS. 

POWEE OE THE HIND. 

(21.) Mysterious indeed is the power of the mind 
of the mother to qualify, perfect, or derange the 
organization of the child before it is born into the 
world. 

Dr. John S. Beale communicates to the Medical 
and Surgical Reporter, Philadelphia, the case of 

Mrs. !NT , of highly nervous temperament. 

About ten weeks previous to delivery, she had 



POWEK OF THE MIKD. 89 

a few scattered spots of " herpes " on the front of 
her chest, "which disappeared under ordinary 
treatment, when some kind, good-natured, know- 
ing old woman informed her it was the ' small-pox, 
and that without doubt her child would suffer from 
the same disease.' The bare notion of this preyed 
yery much upon her mind, and her husband and 
myself both failed in driving the absorbing notion 
from her brain. 

" On the child being born, I noticed it had been 
dead for several days, the head, face, and whole 
surface of the body being covered at about three- 
quarter inch intervals with pustules, exactly re- 
sembling in size, form, and appearance, the small- 
pox vesicles at maturity. The depression in the 
centre was plainly marked. When the topmost 
cuticle was detached, there was no fluid of any sort 
underneath. The mother's first remark was, i Is 
the child marked ? ' She fully believed it would 
be so." 

Dr. Beale reports other cases as follows : 1. "A 
child born with one eye of a light-blue color (right 
eye) ; the other a dark hazel. Mother says she had 
seen a child with similar eyes sitting on a doorstep 
in Lisson-grove. 

2. " Child born with mouth and upper and lower 
extremities resembling those of a dog. Mother 
states that she was worried and torn by a dog 
whilst she was in the seventh month of gestation. 

3. " Child born with left eye blackened as from 
a blow. The mother stated that her husband came 
home irritated, and struck her (eight hours pre- 



90 MATEK^AL IMPEESSIOKS. 

vious to lier confinement) on the corresponding 
part of her face. 

4. " A child born with four little fins or stumps 
for upper and lower extremities. The mother had 
been frightened by seeing a man maimed in his 
lower extremities, who used to traverse the streets 
on a board with wheels. 

5. " Child born ten nights after display of fire- 
works in commemoration of Crimean war. Child's 
feet were covered with bladders of serum, similiar 
to those arising from scald or burn. The mother 
was alarmed by the descent of a stick of a dis- 
charged fire-rocket, which struck the roof close by 
the place where she was standing." 

Another case {Reporter), given in the Deutsche 
Klinik for Sept. Child born well developed ex- 
cept that it lacked abdominal parieties. The mo- 
ther had seen a sheep wounded and with its bowels 
protruding, at which she was greatly shocked, and 
did not recover her composure for several days. 
Another child was born with a hare-lip. The mo- 
ther had seen a boy having this deformity. 

Another, remarkable and sad case, is given by 
Dr. Crawford, in the Nashville Journal of Medi- 
cine : " A lady in the last stage of gestation was 
burned by the explosion of a kerosene oil can. She 
lived twelve hours after the accident. The face, 
legs, arms, and abdomen were completely vesicated, 
and in many places the skin was entirely destroyed. 
The movements of the child were felt three or four 
hours after the accident. A short time before the 
death of the mother she gave birth to the child at 



POWEB OF THE MIKD. 91 

full maturity, but still-born. It bore the mark of 
the fire corresponding to that of the mother. Its legs, 
arms, and abdomen were completely vesicated, hav- 
ing all the appearances of a recent burn. 

"A very important physiological fact, if Dr. 
Crawford was not mislead." — Medical and Surgical 
Reporter. 

From the New York Herald, Sept., 1868, the 
following singular instance is given : " A Vermont 
paper says : — There is a man in this State who can- 
not speak to his father. Previous to his birth some 
difficulty arose between his mother and father, and 
for a considerable time she refused to speak with 
him. The difficulty was subsequently healed, the 
child was born, and in due time began to talk : but 
when sitting with his father was invariably silent. 
It continued so until the child was five years old, 
when the father, having exhausted his powers of 
persuasion, threatened it with punishment for its 
stubbornness. When the punishment was inflicted 
it elicited nothing but sighs and groans, which told 
but too plainly that the little sufferer could not 
speak, though he vainly endeavored to do so. All 
who were present united in the opinion that it was 
impossible for the child to speak to its father. 
Time proved this opinion to be correct. At a ma- 
ture age its efforts to converse with its parent could 
only produce the most bitter sighs and groans." 

Prof. Brittan, in his work on "Man and His 
Kelations," gives several interesting examples of 
this law : "A lady, who,' during the period of ap- 
proaching maternity, was chiefly employed in read- 



92 MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS. 

ing the poets, and in giving form to her day-dreams 
of the ideal world, at the same time gave to her 
child (in phrenological parlance), large ideality 
and a highly imaginative turn of mind. Some 
time since I met with a youth who has finely 
moulded limbs and a symmetrical form throughout. 
His mother has a large, lean, attenuated frame, 
that does not offer so much as a single suggestion 
of the beautiful. The boy is doubtless indebted 
for his fine form to the presence of a beautiful 
French lithograph in his mother's sleeping apart- 
ment, and which presented for her contemplation 
the faultless form of a naked child. 

" On one occasion, after the delivery of a lecture 
in a small town in central New York, I went to 

the house of Mr. K , to pass the night. My 

theme had been, the power of the mind as exhi- 
bited in the organic formation and vital action of 
the body, and also in the various expressions of 

which the human face is susceptible. Mrs. , 

who was a member of the household, intimated a 
desire to exhibit a marked illustration of the sub- 
ject. Accordingly, calling her little son, of the 
age of three years, to her side, she exposed his back 
to the inspection of the company. Between his 
shoulders there was a most perfect representation 
of a mouse. The mark — which was elevated some- 
what above the surrounding surface — was literally 
covered with a thick coat of fine hair, like that of 
the animal represented ; and, what was still more 
surprising, the cuticle also precisely resembled the 
skin of a mouse. 



POWER OF THE MIKD. 93 

"Some years since, the writer was acquainted 
with a married lady, who lived in Fairfield county, 
Conn., and was universally respected and esteemed 
for her exemplary life and unblemished character. 
She was strongly attached to her church ; and her 
pastor — who was an earnest and forcible speaker — 
realized her ideal of early and uncorrupted man- 
hood. The lady was accustomed to listen — on each 
succeeding Sabbath — to his eloquent discourses, 
with reverent and rapt attention. She possessed 
a lively imagination, and a strong, but doubtless a 
strictly legitimate interest in the young clergy- 
man ; and the image so often presented to the eye 
and the mind, was transmitted to another. Dur- 
ing the second year of the ministry of Mr. , in 

that place, the lady referred to became the mother 
of a son, who, from his birth, was observed to re- 
semble the minister;- nor is the likeness less apparent 
since the child has become a tall and graceful youth. 

"A gentleman of our acquaintance, who has 
very dark eyes, hair and beard, is wedded to a lady 
with brown hair, and a complexion not lighter 
than his own. Of nine children — the offspring of 
their marriage — six are living, and, with a single 
exception, they all have dark, straight hair, and 
hazel eyes. Indeed, for several generations, not a 
single member of either family has had curly hair. 
The exceptional case is a fair youth with large, blue, 
expressive eyes and golden locks, with a natural 
tendency to curl. Some time before his birth the 
parents had occasion to spend a month with a fam- 
ily in Boston, where there was a radiant child with 



94 MATERIAL IMPRESSIONS. 

delicate skin, mild blue eyes, and a profusion of 
sunny curls. The lady visitor became deeply in- 
terested in that beautiful child, and often gazed at 
it with rapturous admiration and delight. The 
strong impulse of the mind thus electrotyped the 
image on her oivn offspring, so regulating the sub- 
tle processes of the vital chemism, as not only to 
determine its general complexion, but also the pre- 
cise color of the hair, and even blending the sub- 
limated elements in the organic chemistry of the 
eye with such nice precision as to fix and reflect 
the violet ray. 

"A gentleman who resides in Le Eoy, N. Y., in 
an interview with the writer, some time since, re- 
lated a singular fact, that may be appropriately in- 
troduced in this connection. His wife had a 
beautiful picture of John the Baptist hanging in 
her room. The figure was in a nude state, except 
the loins, which were encircled with the girdle of 
camel's hair, supported by a single strap passing 
over one shoulder. The lady being in delicate 
health for some time, (antecedent to the birth of a 
son, now some sixteen years of age,) had occasion 
to spend much of her time on a couch from which 
the picture was constantly exposed to view. The 
youth referred to presents one of the greatest nov- 
elties in the category of psychological phenomena. 
It is a curious fact that he ivill never wear Met one 
suspender ! If commanded to put on a pair, he 
will obey ; but he is quite sure to have them both 
over the same shoulder that supports the strap and 
the girdle in the picture. 



POWEB OF THE MIHD. 95 

" I well remember a young man, whose earth-life, 
of some thirty year's duration, was the frightful 
embodiment and expression of one terrible scene. 
He had not opened his eyes to behold the light of 
the natural world, when a desolating tornado 
passed over his native town. The tall oaks, which 
had brayed the storms of centuries, bowed low as 
the slender grass bends in the summer's breeze; 
or, rather as the grain is leveled by the reaper's 
sickle. It was a fatal hour! The sufferings of 
many years seemed condensed into one awful mo- 
ment of unspeakable horror, and the terrible scene 
cast its dark shadow oyer the whole life of a hu- 
man being. That tempest was reproduced in that 
man. For nearly thirty years — and until the close 
of his mortal existence — his eyes rolled in their 
sockets with a strange delirious expression. Ever 
and anon he sighed heavily, as the winds sigh 
through the tall trees ; and his head and all his 
limbs swayed to and fro, perpetually, as the forest 
boughs are moved when the breath of the tempest 
sweeps over them. Poor mortal ! his melancholy 
life is over, and he has found rest at last where the 
storms of earth and time shall disturb his repose 
no more !" 



APPETENCY.— BODY AND MIND RECIPROCATE. 

(22.) As the constitutions of all animate beings 
differ more or less, so also the appetencies, (appe- 
tites determined by the wants of the system,) which 
they possess for obtaining their nourishment differ 
in the same degree. The maggot, or being of what- 
ever kind, that rejoices in the condition of the ele- 
ments of the decaying carcase, satisfies there with 
relish its normal appetite ; and such food is of the 
proper quality to nourish that being ; but that same, 
as food, is not proper to nourish certain other more 
exalted beings. If the same kind of food be given 
to different beings, as reptile, quadruped, or man ; 
in the different kinds of animals it is subjected to 
a different chemical elaboration, so that different 
elements and combinations are selected and made 
use of to nourish the being. And even different 
members of the human family build up their con- 
stitutions by different appetencies, having prefer- 
ences for different kinds of food : or if the food for 
the different individuals should be of the same 
kind, the peculiar appetency of each individual 
would make somewhat different selection of ele- 
ments through a modified vital chemical elabora- 
tion. Even the taste of the same food is not the 
same to all men. Now if this is not so — if the taste 
of the same food is the same to all men, then why 
should it not extend as a rule to all animal life ; 
and why should not then the taste of carrion to 



APPETENCY. 97 

the maggot be exactly the same as its taste to man ? 
But we are conscious that this is not the case. 

Yet the appetencies are susceptible of modifi- 
cation ; the constitution yields or makes a compro- 
mise so as to tolerate, or eyen enjoy bad food, bad 
drink, etc. ; and the physical constitution is by it 
in a degree changed when the governing appe- 
tency, as it may from long habit, has become modi- 
fied, and the mind, or the animate principle, 
receives also the modifying impression, and is 
changed somewhat in the plane of its being. 

An impression therefore operates from the char- 
acter and condition of the food ; but as action and 
reaction are always equal, whatever be the sphere 
wherein we may recognize them, we must, and do 
find, that either exaltation or debasement of that 
which we call mind or spirit, must have its charac- 
teristic reaction on the body which it participates 
in constructing,, if, indeed, it be true that the mind 
partakes in the office of determining the shape and 
constitution of the body. 

(23.) Facts bearing on this subject will be found 
in other parts of this volume ; and I may here ap- 
propriately give these features of the subject. Con- 
tentment of mind, which usually results from suc- 
cess in laudable efforts, does not conflict with or 
retard, but rather contributes to the favorable de- 
velopment and health of the body ; or rather we 
may consider that when the true wants of the body 
are supplied, the mind is at ease as a result of this 
condition. The body has its instinct ; it seeks its 
normal wants ; and if these wants are not supplied, 



98 APPETENCY. 

the body is uneasy and causes the mind also to be 
uneasy, for the body looks to the mind as an intel- 
ligent agent to supply its wants. The pleasures 
and pains of both body and mind are reciprocal, 
and react upon each other. The body wants 
proper food, air, water, warmth, exercise, etc. The 
mind wants these also, because the body wants 
them, — the mind feels the distress if the body be 
not supplied with them. The mind wants genial 
associations and sociabilities — it wants the beau- 
tiful, the melodious, the sublime, the harmonious, 
the lovely, the sympathetic, and it wants proper 
occupation for the exercise of its powers ; and if it 
do not have these, the body sympathizes with the 
mind, proving that the body also feels this want. 
Thus, are the mind and body interchangeable in 
their influences, and mutual in their relationship. 

And it is well that this law of mutual relation- 
ship exists between the body and the mind, because 
even when the wants of the body are not fully sat- 
isfied, the power of the will may make this law 
available for good by accepting reverses with forti- 
tude and a calm acquiescence, which has a com- 
pensating influence upon the body to sustain it 
through its wants and hardships. 

Also, as relating to this subject, how pertinent 
is the remark of Dr. Trail : " People who live, 
move and have their being under one dull monot- 
onous routine of circumstances, become mentally 
stupid and physiologically indolent and sensual, 
for want of suitable external circumstances to call 
out the mind and exercise the body." 



POWEK OF THE MIKD OYEE THE BODY. 99 

Here we may appropriately call to mind the fact, 
that some people frequently change their place of 
living, their associations, and also their occupation ; 
and the cause of this may be not so much, or per- 
haps not at all, from any fickleness of mind, nor 
from want of remunerative success in business, as 
from a real demand of the mental and physical 
constitution of the individual. Perhaps from the 
inheritance of a constitution not strong, or which 
has a tendency to some disease, the change of bu- 
siness, offering another range of thought, is a salu- 
tary one when it is sought for or craved by the 
mental intuition. 



POWER OF THE MIND OYER THE BODY. 

Mysterious as these things are, yet it is well 
known that the mind may exercise great power 
upon the body. How the mental feelings of 
modesty or embarrassment influence the capillary 
circulation to crimson the cheeks — how fear causes 
paleness, and how depressing emotions weary and 
have exhausting influence upon the vitality, dimin- 
ishing the appetite and with it all the normal vital 
processes. Bad news, forebodings of ill, disap- 
pointed hopes, inordinate anxieties, domestic un- 
happiness, unhappy business relations, imaginary 
disaster, etc., — these, and immeasurably more, have 
their power to establish lingering or perhaps fatal 
disease. 



100 POWER OF THE MISTD OYER THE BODY. 

In the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, 
(July 1868,) is mentioned a case of paralysis com- 
ing on suddenly from mental shock, and also dis- 
appearing suddenly from exhilaration and joy. 
Miss. K., a girl about" fourteen years of age, very 
sprightly and intelligent, and of a very sensitive 
and affectionate disposition, although not very 
robust, had always enjoyed excellent health until 
the latter part of June, 1868, when " she became 
very much alarmed about the safety of her father — 
a man of very regular and domestic habits — who 
failed to come home one evening at his usual hour. 
Towards midnight the mother showed much un- 
easiness, seeing which, the daughter became ex- 
ceedingly depressed and fearful, and when her 
father reached his domicile he found both wife and 
child in a state of terror bordering on despair. In 
the morning the girl did not appear at the break- 
fast table as usual, and being asked why she did 
not get up, replied that she had tried, and found 
that she had lost the power of her lower extremities; 
said she had a headache and had slept none, and 
had a peculiar painful sensation along her back 
and in her legs." 

Her physician states, that on learning the above 
facts, he endeavored to impress the parents and the 
patient, " with the belief that her apparently alarm- 
ing symptoms were only nervous, and of a hypo- 
chondriacal character, resulting from the mental 
trouble and anxiety of the previous evening. He 
also tried to rally and banter the girl out of the 
notion that she was paralyzed, and insisted on her 



POWER OF THE MIKD OYER THE BODY. 101 

getting up and walking ; after her mother got her 
out of bed he caught hold of her, and in a jocular 
and persuasive manner, dragged her along the 
floor, but she seemed to* have no power to move 
her lower limbs, and he had to hold her up whilst 
they hung dangling after her. He could pinch 
them or prick them with a needle without her 
evincing much feeling, although their temperature 
was normal, and her general symptoms favorable 
with the exception of a slight acceleration of the 
pulse." ~No medical treatment had any effect to 
restore this patient, and she was sustained almost 
entirely by tonic medicines for five months, when 
one morning, in the latter part of December, her 
mother gave birth to a child ; one of the ladies 
present opened the door of the adjoining room 
where the " patient was sitting, and joyfully an- 
nounced to her that she had got a little brother ; 
at that moment the baby squalled lustily, and the 
invalid jumped up and ran into the mother's 
apartment and caught up the child and kissed it 
frantically ! Erom this time her paralysis was gone ; 
indeed, she seemed so rejoiced that she could walk 
that we had to restrain her from exercising her 
limbs too much. At first her gait was staggering, 
but in a few days her locomotion was excellent, and 
she still continues to have perfect use of all her 
muscles. At this time her back and limbs seem 
as strong as ever ; her appetite has returned and her 
general health is very good/' 

Prof. Watson, of King's College, London, when 
speaking of epilepsy, says that any strong mental 



102 POWEK OF THE MIKD OVEE THE BODY. 

emotion is apt to produce the fit in a person who 
is already subject to the disease. He also states, 
that a singular occasional cause of epilepsy, is the 
sight of a person in a fit Of that disease. 

The depressing mental emotion, as of the loss of 
property, besides doing injury to the health has 
caused the hair to turn prematurely gray; and 
most people are familiar with the relation of the 
following circumstances : To test the effect of fear, 
three persons, separately, one after another, by 
agreement among themselves, met a fourth person 
who was in robust health and observed to him, 
" How ill you seem to be," etc. The effect was im- 
mediately apparent: he was taken with serious 
illness, produced entirely by the effect of their 
statements upon his mind. Also, it is related by 
accepted authority, that a criminal condemned to 
death was submitted to the experiment of making 
him believe that he was being bled to death. He 
was blindfolded, a small stream of blood-warm wa- 
ter caused to run down his arm ; and this, together 
with the remarks of the by-standers, " How pale ha 
looks ! " " What deep color of the blood," etc., made 
such impression on his mind as caused him actu- 
ally to expire. 

A wager was made with a person that he dare 
not sleep in a room where there had been a case of 
cholera. He retired to the room and was attacked 
that night with actual cholera, and though no one 
had been sick there as had been represented, and 
though this fact was then made known to him, it 
was too late, and he expired. 



RECIPIENCY AND INFLUENCE OF MIND. 

(24.) Images of the beautiful are reflected in the 
mind, and the condition or quality of the mental 
entity is modified thereby. If the mind dwells on 
beauties, doth it not become itself impressed with 
the beautiful? They who are favored by time, 
circumstance, capacity and inclination, to let their 
thoughts dwell upon the beautiful and the lovely, 
show to our observation that such genial habitude 
of mind has a transforming power upon the indi- 
vidual. They seem more truly to comprehend the 
sublimity, which ordinary intelligence teaches us 
exists in the scenery of nature. They tell us of 
their happy and exalted impressions while contem- 
plating the rainbow-arch, the morning sunlight 
thrown from the snow-capped mountain, the moon- 
beams smiling over the sleeping hemisphere, the 
summer's green, the variegated robe of the autumn 
forest, the gaudy sunsets closing the days in the 
western horizon, the elaborate-tinted flowers . that 
cast their beauties around our feet, the jeweled fir- 
manent of heaven, with wonders for the effort of 
reason peering into space, where the Omnipotent 
hand holds the centripetal cords of orbitular 
worlds, giving evermore to them arrayed glories 
in their ever changing circles — there "where the 
senses of thought may be overwhelmed, till the 
spirit seems to hear even the music of the spheres." 

Reflections upon varied beauties and loveliness, 
on whosever constitution they can act with power, 



104 TRANSFORMING POWERS OF THE MIND. 

must carry their influence beyond the mind by 
their continued influence, and change through 
successive generations, even the body to a more ex- 
alted form of humanity. And the appetency also 
would be modified, so that the subject would rel- 
ish that kind of food, or select from the food the 
portions and combination of elements which are 
better adapted to nourish more exalted beings. 
Images of the beautiful have power also to trans- 
form to their similitude the subject receiving that 
impression, more especially when received in a he- 
reditary manner from the impression which has a 
long time acted on the parents' mind. — (See page 
94.) 

TRANSFORMING POWERS OF THE MIND. 

(24.) The transforming powers of the mind are 
rather positive in their nature. A brief illustration 
of this, in Prof. I\ 9 w1gi ,; s great work on Physiog- 
nomy, is very apt, and I will here quote it : " The 
change in calling or position in life, produces a 
change in expression, a change in faculties, and a 
change in the disposition. Let us suppose the 
reader to be a clergyman. He will in time take 
on an expression peculiar to his high and holy avo- 
cation ; but at the end of ten years' ministration 
he decides to become a lawyer — to try contested 
cases before the courts, and to settle disputes : he 
then calls into action another set of faculties, and 
in the course of ten years or more, he has parted 
with the ministerial look, and has taken on the ex- 
pression of a shrewd, intellectual polemic. Or 



HAS THE MIKD COKTOUK ? 105 

suppose he becomes a sailor. His associations are 
changed, and instead of being surrounded by soci- 
ety, a wife, children, and friends, he becomes the 
captain of a ship, with a crew of rough hardy men, 
who face danger and death in countless storms, 
but he manages to ride out his time and take his 
place among the navigators — how different, his 
face as well as the life he lives, is the sea captain 
from the clergyman ! " 



HAS THE MIND CONTOUR] BO THOUGHTS HATE 
SHAPE I 

(26.) Mind controls the features, and gives the 
expression of its character even in shape. Not 
only does the shape of the head, but also that of 
the whole body, correspond with the mental char- 
acteristics — even the walk, and every movement 
whatever, and every sound of the voice. The arm 

of Mr. P , the horrid murderer, is preserved 

and on exhibition in one of our cities as an inter- 
esting exemplification of this fact. Even the hand- 
writing has its figures or expression of character, 
though we may not be wise enough, by observation 
or instinctive tuition, to interpret it fully to our 
satisfaction. The almost universal observation of 
mankind upon the truths of phrenology and phys- 
iognomy, and upon the shape and feature of ex- 
pression of all kinds of animals, corroborates these 
things. Even the pictured representations of an- 
gels and of demons, show emphatically the univer- 
sal acceptance of these truths. 
5* 



106 WHY MAEEIAGES OF COKSAKGUI^TITY 



WHY MARRIAGES OF COSSATsGUIMTY RESTRICT 
VITAL RESOURCES. 

Vitality is a force which is progressive, working 
by laws, and having tendency even to repair the 
infractions of its own laws. To accomplish this, 
it makes available all the conditions within its 
reach, but within the limitations of laws, outside 
of which it does not act. Now, it is by law that 
mankind differ; and even a common parentage, 
and the law that like produces like, does not con- 
flict with the fact that mankind differ, because 
it is only under the same qualifying conditions 
that like produces like. The male children of two 
parents are not all alike ; neither are the female 
children of two parents all alike. During different 
years the parents have been subjected to different 
qualifying influences; their occupations, their 
thoughts, their experiences, the quality of their food 
and drink, and their mode of living, and perhaps 
their place of residence, have not, in successive 
years, been entirely the same ; therefore, their child- 
ren cannot be all alike, though there will be gen- 
eral resemblances. Changed influences become im- 
pressions which enter into the qualities of the off- 
spring, either directly, by operating on their pa- 
rents, or indirectly, by their influence in calling 
into activity in the offspring peculiarities which 
existed in latency in the parents. — (See chapter on 
"Underground or Latent Peculiarities," page 83.) 



KESTKICT VITAL KESOUKCES. 107 

For progeny to be produced in successive uniform- 
ity when the parents are subjected to varied chang- 
ing influences, would itself be in violation of the 
law that like produces like. 




Now let us examine the above diagram, present- 
ing parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, 
and so on. P, represents an individual whose pa- 
rents are and 0, whose grandparents are M, m, 
N and n, whose great-grandparents are / i, J j, 
K k, L I, and whose great-great-grandparents 
are A a, B l>;Cc, D d, E e, Ff. G g, #and h. It 
is plain that the individual P, inherits peculiarities 
from four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 
and sixteen great-great-grandparents; and con- 



108 WHY MAKEIAGES OF CO^SAXGUIKITY 

sidering the varied conditions of life — the varities 
of occupations, associations, habits, food and cli- 
mate, which have their qualifying influences, and 
also, the underground or latent peculiarities, sus- 
ceptible of becoming active in the progeny, it is 
plain that the resources of P to thrive upon inher- 
itance are rather favorable, because nature is a 
force striving to maintain and progress. The vi- 
tal powers of the progeny P, strive to take on by 
inheritance all the qualities of these progenitors 
that are vigorous and well balanced. 
A?s A a But let us consider this dia- 

./ j gram, representing the successive 
xf I marrying of brothers and sisters. 
/ \ s j There it is plain that E, can have 
B / y. j, only two grandparents, O and c, 

and only two great-grandparents, 
B and b, and only two great-great- 
\ | grandparents, A and a. Now, 
''••j c after the conflicts of accidents 
/ ! and exposures, imprudences, toils, 
••/' and poisonous influences, and 

\ ] whatever causes disease, it must 
B / N d De plain that the resources of 

/'] healthful inheritance are very 
r \''' greatly restricted, limited, nar- 

! / \ j rowed down, or whatever other 
E V M e term may be used to express the 

want of strength in the offspring. And if it 
should be objected that, suppose previous to A, a, 
there had been no intermarriages of relation, and 
that the vigor of many preceding progenitors may 



s 



KESTEICT VITAL KESOUKCES. 109 

have passed through A, B, C, and D, by the law 
of latency, down to E, the answer is appropriate, 
that the immediate inheritance from near ancestry, 
rather than remote, generally takes precedence. 

The unfavorable effect upon the progeny from 
the intermarrying of relations is almost universally 
accepted as true. The law of Moses, as presented 
in the Book of Leviticus, defines the relationships 
within which marriage was not allowed. 

" * Nearly all the Indians of North America were 
divided into clans, or, as they were called by the 
Algonkins, totems, the genealogies of which were 
scrupulously preserved in the female line. No per- 
son could marry in their own totem ; and it was 
currently believed that if this rule was violated, 
serious physical consequences would result." 

Darwin, in his celebrated work on the Origin of 
Species by means of natural selection, says : " I 
have collected so large a body of facts showing, in 
accordance with the almost universal belief of 
breeders, that with animals and plants, a cross be- 
tween different varieties, or between individuals 
of the same variety but of another strain, gives 
vigor and fertility to the offspring; and on the 
other hand, that close interbreeding diminishes 
vigor and fertility ; that these facts alone incline 
me to believe that ," ect. 

But notwithstanding this almost universally ac- 
cepted law, Dr. B , of Berlin, in the December 

number of the Journal fur Kinderlcranhliieten, 

* Medical and Surgical Reporter. 



110 WHY MARRIAGES OE CONSANGUINITY 

seems to take some exceptions to it. But his ar- 
ticle appears to have some strange contradictions 
with itself. He says, (A.) "The relationship of 
the parents, no matter how near this may be, even 
to brother and sister, exerts in itself positively no 
injurious influence on the physical or mental char- 
acter of the children ; nor is it in the least a cause 
of sterility." He further says, (B.) "repeated mar- 
riages, generation after generation, between rela- 
tions, have nevertheless the effect of developing 
the bodily or mental weaknesses of ancestors in 
their descendants, and in this respect, a crossing 
of blood becomes a necessity in order to avoid 
these weaknesses." And he says, (C.) "But per 
contra, just as these weaknesses are increased by 
such marriages, so are physical and mental advan- 
tages, such as muscular power, courage, business 
tact, energy, etc. ; they are developed and become 
the rights of birth. And therefore, precisely these 
marriages are to be recommended, (es wiirde ge- 
rade, solche Ehen zu empfehlen sein), in order to 
keep the blood pure and improve the family." 

In the above, (B.) and (C), we have virtually 
two statements contradictory of each other. First, 
thus, (B.) : By repeated marriages of relatives the 
bodily or mental weaknesses of their ancestors are 
developed in the descendants, leaving their bodily 
and mental energies in the back-ground, "under- 
ground" or latent. Secondly, thus, (0.) : By re- 
peated marriages of relatives, the bodily or men- 
tal energies of their ancestors are developed in the 
descendants, leaving their bodily or mental weak- 



RESTRICT VITAL RESOURCES. Ill 

nesses in the background, " underground. " or la- 
tent! Therefore, precisely, are his two statements 
in direct contradiction to each other. 

Again, let us examine his first statement, quoted 
above, (A), that "marriage even of brothers and 
sisters positively exerts no injurious influence on 
the children. If this is law, then why may it not 
be law that the intermarriage of the children of 
these children, brothers and sisters, should posi- 
tively exert no injurious influence, instead of, as 
he says, then developing the weaknesses of their 
ancestors, so that " the crossing of blood becomes a 
necessity in order to avoid these weaknesses ?" Cer- 
tainly it seems that if the second intermarriage of 
relatives proved decidedly injurious, the first in- 
termarriage must have been somewhat so. 

Now, it is well known that hereditary peculi- 
arities, as a general rule in marriages not of con- 
sanguinity, show more in the children than in the 
grandchildren, though this is not always the case, 
for sometimes the peculiarity runs underground, 
or is latent in the child to appear in the grand- 
child, (see chapter on Latent Peculiarities, page 
82.) ; and when the exception occurs it does not 
prove that the exception is the rule. 

And when it does occur that a peculiarity, pre- 
dominant in the grandparent and latent in the 
parent, becomes predominant in the child, it is not 
because it was in the second generation that it be- 
came predominant, but rather because the mental, 
moral and physical causes that influenced " anterior 
education," (see page 106), and its infancy an % 



112 WHY MAERIAGES OF COKSAKGUI^ITY 

youth, (see pages 9 and 10), were more in simili- 
tude with those that caused such peculiarity to be 
predominant in the grandparent. 

When it is observed, in any case, that the child- 
ren of consanguine parents are in the first gener- 
ation as healthy as their parents, this should not be 
at once interpreted as law, because the unfavorable 
influences resulting from such consanguinity hap- 
pens to be in a state of latency in those children. 
Also, doth not the fact that successive intermar- 
riages in consanguinity develop the weaknesses in 
an increasing ratio, prove that the more varied is 
our inheritance, conditions of health being equal, 
(the more plurality of personality that enters into 
the individual) the vigor, and power, and precision 
of effort become his inheritance. 

Are not all nature's laws immutable, so that 
what we call exceptions to them are only seeming 
exceptions ? Dr. B , claims that certain fam- 
ilies have married in and in for centuries, and that 
their members are now " remarkable for physical 
strength and good looks." Now, this is not a real 
but only a seeming exception to the law that mar- 
rying " in and in " is prejudicial to the offspring, 
as will doubtless be plain on examination. To be 
physically strong, and to have what may be .called 
good looks, can exist without real brain-power; 
and in the above cases he does not claim anything 
in regard to brain power, (precision of intellection.) 

But suppose they had equally as much brain- 
power also ; even then, a positive and perhaps un- 
answerable explanation of such seeming exception 



EESTEICT YITAL RESOURCES. 113 

to the above stated law is this; as instance: sup- 
pose Mr. Chang-fee, resembling somewhat the Mon- 
golian race, and Miss Plimpley, resembling the 
European race, having marked contrasts in their 
mental and physical temperaments, should marry ; 
and suppose some of their children, as is often the 
case, should resemble apparently their father alto- 
gether, and some their mother altogether, and all 
combination of resemblance in any one child to 
both parents being latent or "underground," so 
that they differ from each other apparently as much 
as their father and mother differ : Now, suppose 
a brother to the Mr. Chang-fee above mentioned, 
differing from him however, should marry a sis- 
ter of the above-mentioned Miss Plimpley, who 
also differed from her in temperament, talents, 
etc.; and suppose their children should differ in 
the same manner as their above-mentioned cousins, 
some taking on, for the most part, the varied pe- 
culiarities which have descended through their 
grandfather, and the others taking on, for the 
most part, the varied peculiarities that have de- 
scended through their grandmother; and sup- 
pose these cousins should intermarry, and from 
the above hereditary influences, and even latent 
peculiarities called into activity in the descendants, 
and others even created, by the qualifying influ 
ences of varied mental and physical occupations, 
habits, varied qualities of food, associations, 
thoughts, etc., if still there should be developed 
marked contrasts in their children — what then? 
They are all Chang-fee, are they not ? 



l!4 why marriages of consanguinity 

The marked contrasts in the ancestors, thus, to- 
gether with influences of habit, etc., now cause all 
consanguine results to be latent, not appearing in 
the descendants before their varied habits, modes 
of life, climate, food, occupations, thoughts, asso- 
ciations, etc., have caused it to be neutralized, pos- 
sibly forever. 

Thus, these families by the name of Chang-fee, 
intermarrying, the consanguinity itself would only 
be a seeming one — it would not be real. 

Dr. Gallard, author of Nouveau Diction aire 
Sciences Medicales, gives the mortality of children 
under seven at one in 6.40, and the mortality of 
children under seven, in marriages of consanguin- 
ity, at one in 8.10 ; and by some, this might be re- 
garded as in favor of marriages of cousins. Yet, 
we ought to take into account that mankind gen- 
erally seek others than relatives as partners, and 
also that they prefer to choose healthy partners, and 
that among relatives all bodily and mental imper- 
fections are more apt to be known to each other, 
as also their bodily and mental perfections, and 
therefore, the marriages in the former case would 
be avoided, and not so much in the latter. There- 
fore, when marriages of relatives occur, it is more 
likely to be, as a general thing, when the parties 
possess vigorous health of body and mind, and its 
consequent good nature and genial attractiveness; 
because of which the children of such healthy cous- 
ins 'are not so likely to suffer as they would be if 
the selection had not such conditions in its favor. 

Hence, we must conclude that Dr. Gallard's 



EESTEICT YITAL KESOUECES. 115 

statistics have no bearing at all in favor of the gen- 
eral marrying of cousins. And, precisely also, this 
same view of the case will itself reply to another 

Dr. , who found that out of a thousand cases 

of consumption he had examined, in only six was 
there consanguinity of parents. It would have 
been some service to medical science, if he had 
therewith given information in regard to the con- 
sanguinity also of their grandparents and great- 
grandparents. 



LATEST QUALITIES MAY BE ABOUSED TO 
ACTIOS. 

Vitality is a force that acts with intelligence. 
When our feet are so pinched that we cannot do 
our duties, this intelligence speaks to us by corns. 
When circulation is interrupted by ligated arteries, 
the circulation is re-established by other arteries be- 
coming formed just where needed; being actually 
newly created by the vital force. The vital force 
resorts to all available means to accomplish its pur- 
pose. When there is an almost mortal contusion 
of the brain, so that the man is apparently killed, 
sometimes this vital force resorts to the latent 
physiological inheritance to sustain the patient, 
which inheritance, by its very latency, has not yet 
had the experiences of thoughts and deeds by 
which man realizes duration of life. 

By the same blow that was almost death to the 



116 LATENT QUALITIES 

experienced life, the latent part, the inexperienced 
life, has become aroused from its latency to vital 
progression — to living action. But when first 
aroused it is infantile in its mental experiences 
and expression. (See the case of George Mckern, 
page 17.) 

In the same manner when the synchronous ac- 
tion of plural personalities has sustained custom- 
ary precision of a mental entity, and upon that 
precision having been interrupted by a severe blow 
upon the head, it has afterward been restored by 
another blow. (See the case related by Louyer 
Yilleramy, page 28.) Also, when there is impover- 
ishment from a want of diversified personality, 
then sometimes a blow on the head revives a latent 
personality to action, so that in time it becomes 
experienced and synchronous in action with the 
existing one, and in this way cures idiocy. (See 
the case of Pope Clement XI, the case related by 
Dr. Prichard, and that of Father Mabillon, page 
28.) 

How truly do these cases corroborate the thesis 
which is the subject of this volume. 

To utilize the knowledge of the plurality in per- 
sonality, we should consider what has perhaps been 
sufficiently alluded to, and what has been observed 
by all people, that mankind differ greatly in their 
constitutions; and also the fact associated there- 
with, that the qualities of food, occupations, chan- 
nels of thoughts, etc., which are most favorable to 
the health of the individual, also differ. 

In the foregoing respects, individuals have a 



MAY BE AROUSED TO ACTION. 117 

plurality of inheritance from their many ancestors : 
and a special quality which exists active in the an- 
cestry may be inherited latent in an individual 
descendant. In order to arouse a special inherited 
latent personality so as to become active, though 
possibly it might occur from a chanced and dan- 
gerous concussion of the head, (page 28,) or by the 
effort of nature, the individual should change his 
mode of life, in all respects, as far as possible, so as 
to conform to that mode which was the habit of 
his ancestor who possessed, not in latency but in 
action, that especial quality. Or this may be dis- 
tinctly stated thus : If an individual has inher- 
ited a tendency to disease from only one parent, 
the other parent being vigorous, and if he becomes 
affected with disease from such inherited tendency, 
he should by all means, as far as possible, change 
his mode of life to conform to that of the early 
days of the healthy parent. He should change the 
mode of life as respects quality of food, drink, air, 
exercise, occupation, etc. ; and it might be said, his 
entire habits, in order to make most available the 
latent inheritance which there may exist, at least 
in that degree which will exercise its remedial 
counteracting influence for health. 

But suppose both parents should be weakly, and 
transmit weakness to the child, then the habits of 
the one so inheriting disease should be changed to 
conform to those of some vigorous one, as nearly 
as possible related in the line of ancestry. And if 
the inheritance of latent vigor which existed in 
action in an ancestor so far back in time that his 



118 LATENT QUALITIES 

history is lost, it may be indicated in some uncle 
or aunt in whom the inheritance of that vigor may 
be active ; and in such a case, the imitation, as far 
as occupations and habits are concerned, ought to 
be not so much those that the uncle or aunt were 
accustomed to, but rather such as seemed more 
agreeable to them, and to which their inclinations 
inclined; for indeed, the ancestors themselves 
may have been placed in a condition not conform- 
ing to that which was most suited to them, and 
yet not varying so much therefrom as actually to 
cause ill health. 

The foregoing remarks become the explanation 
how it is that mankind differ so much in the pos- 
session of peculiarities that show their active ten- 
dencies either toward health or toward disease; 
for even tendencies to disease may be inherited, con- 
cerning which it may be well here to refer to the 
accepted authority of Prof. Watson, formerly of 
King's College, London, whose remarks are defi- 
nite on this subject. " There are certain complaints 
which some have a tendency to and some have not. 
The tendency is sometimes strong and evident, 
sometimes feeble and faintly marked ; sometimes 
it displays itself in the midst of circumstances the 
most favorable to health, sometimes it requires for 
its development conditions the most adverse and 
trying. To mention some of these diseases ; scrof- 
ula * * gout, mania, and (I believe I may add) 
spasmodic asthma. Not only is a disposition to 
these complaints strikingly pronounced in some 
persons, but other persons appear wholly free from 



MAY BE AROUSED TO ACTION. 119 

such a tendency; nay, even devoid of the suscep- 
tibility of them. Gout, in those capable of it, may 
be acquired by habits, as it may be prevented and 
repressed by the opposite habits. The habits that 
in certain persons bring it on, are the intemperate 
use of the luxuries of the table, and an indolent 
and sedentary life ; but there are many people in 
whom no amount of rich living or idleness will 
generate gout ; so there are some whom no expo- 
sure to impure air, cold, wet, and no privations — 
in other words, no appliance of the influences cal- 
culated to bring the strumous diathesis into play, 
will ever produce any form of scrofula, will ever 
render them consumptive, for instance, consump- 
tion being one of the most common and fatal 
shapes of scrofulous disease. There are many who, 
under the utmost distress and excitement of mind, 
never become insane. There are many who never 
become affected with asthma, although surrounded 
by the most powerful exciting causes to that com- 

T)lfllTlt '^^* 4s H> H» % *i» Hs 

" But there is a singular caprice in asthmatic pa- 
tients in this respect : some persons subject to the 
disorder, are unable to breathe in the thick, smoky 
atmosphere of London, require a high and clear 
situation, and respire easiest in the difficult air of 
the keen mountain top; others can nowhere 
breathe so comfortably as in low, moist places in 
some of the streets by the water-side in the city ; 
for instance, a friend lived in New Market, a most 
exposed bleak spot, but if he left it and attempted 
to sleep in a strange place, he never was certain 



120 LATENT QUALITIES 

that he should not be assailed in the night by his 
well-known enemy, (asthma) ; so that there were 
towns in which, after experiencing the effect of the 
atmosphere, he dared not sleep, and there were 
others in which he knew he might go to bed in 
security. It would have been difficult, I believe, 
to point out auy essential difference between some 
of those localities; his lungs, however, formed an 
infallible eudiometer. Another college acquain- 
tance of mine, (Wilson), much tormented by asth- 
ma, is equally sensible to these inscrutable influ- 
ences. Two inns in Cambridge are named respect- 
ively the Eed Lion and the Eagle ; he can sleep 
in one of them and not in the other : nay, he is 
thus variously affected within much narrower lim- 
its. He assures me that when in Paris he never 
escapes a fit of asthma when he attempts to sleep 
in the back part of Meurice's Hotel, and never 
suffers when he sleeps in a front room. Dover 
Street suits him, Charles Street does not." 

In the foregoing, Prof. Watson has recognized 
how greatly mankind differ in their constitutions ; 
and it is often brought forcibly to our observation. 
Of two individuals, oftentimes the stronger one 
sickens and dies from some unhealthy influence or 
exposure which has little or no effect upon the 
other. And suppose these two individualsxto be 
brothers, and therefore, having the same parentage, 
it would indicate that the active and the latent 
qualities existing in them by inheritance were dif- 
ferent in each other to cause such difference in 
their tendencies to, or susceptibilities of, a special 



MAT BE AROUSED TO ACTION. 121 

disease. And of two individuals, possessing equal 
health and vigor, one will more readily, under the 
same influence, contract one kind of disease, and 
the other another kind; also, the asthmatic pa- 
tients, as above mentioned, who were so differently 
affected by different localities that showed no recog- 
nizable difference in unsalutary influences, indicate 
how apparently slight is the change required for 
some persons to inhale an atmosphere which, to 
them, in the one case is life, and in the other is death. 

Let us now draw nearer to an interesting view 
of plural personality, and consider the case of the 
Eev. J. E — , (pp.25 & 2 6), who from a concussion 
of the brain lost all his knowledge — returned men- 
tally to the condition of an intelligent child, and 
after learning again from tutors for several months, 
things which, though learned before, had become 
lost to him, after awhile "the rich storehouses 
of memory were gradually unlocked, so that in a 
few weeks his mind resumed its wonted vigor." 
He was possessed with plural personality; the one 
which had been active in his younger days had be- 
come passive to give place to another, doubtless, a 
more intellectual one, which, by his studies, had 
become aroused from its latency to activity, but 
from the concussion the former one had become 
active, and the latter passive, until, by intellectual 
exertion of the same kind as before, it had become 
aroused again to activity. 

The case immediately following this, (on pages 26 
and 27,) of a gentleman thirty years old, who, after a 
severe sickness, lost the recollection of every thing, 
6 



122 LATENT QUALITIES 

even the names of the most common objects, and 
began again, his health being restored, to acquire 
knowledge like a child, and after he began to learn 
Latin, etc., is very important in illustrating this 
subject. After making considerable progress in 
his Latin, when reciting to his teacher he stopped 
suddenly and put his hand to his head, feeling a 
peculiar sensation, and informed his teacher that it 
appeared to him that he knew all this before ; and 
from that time he rapidly recovered his faculties ; 
that is, he became as he had been before his sick- 
ness, with his acquirements and memories. Now, 
suppose in this case he had, in his acquired in- 
fantile state, been taken to another country to 
live — for instance, to the country where one of his 
ancestors had lived whom he mostly resembled, not 
in mental power but in mental qualities, as near as 
those could be determined in his new infantile 
state ; and suppose also, that instead of learning 
the same branches of study that he had formerly 
learned, his mind had been directed altogether in 
another channel of study or occupation, such as, 
for instance, conformed to that of the ancestor 
from whom he had inherited the personality which 
by sickness had been aroused to activity — what 
then? He would have lived another life; he 
would have been the other being; he would prob- 
ably never afterward have recollected any of his 
Latin, or any circumstance of his former life, and 
he would have been a younger man ; for that per- 
sonality, which had existed in a state of latency or 
passiveness for thirty years, had not grown old by 



MAY BE AKOUSED TO ACTION. 123 

the experiences of activity. But it would be rather 
an extraordinary chance for one in such a con- 
dition to be removed to another country, to have 
altogether different scenes and experiences of life, 
since no attention heretofore has been called to 
such possibilities, and it would be far more prob- 
able that his friends would keep him in the same 
place, and that he would be submitted to the same 
experiences, and have the same studies to pursue 
as in his former life, and hence would be most 
likely to recover his former personality. Are not 
these things true ? 

Again, on page twenty-seven there is another case, 
a very important one, illustrating plural person- 
ality — the case of a lady who from sickness was re- 
duced to a state of great weakness and a remark- 
able failure of memory. And what says the record 
in regard to that loss of memory? She forgot 
twelve years of her life, and those twelve years were 
the time she had lived in JEdinlurg, having for- 
merly lived in another city. This "case shows, that 
by going to Edinburg, and having the scenes and 
mode of living changed, she had developed there 
more exclusively a special personality, (which be- 
fore had, doubtless, been associated in action with 
another one, if on going to Edinburg she had not 
become very idiosyncratic,) but that distinct 
personality was more especially attacked by the 
disease, so that it lost its power both of body and 
mind. She recovered her health, the account says, 
" but remained in a state of imbecility, resembling 
the dotage of old age ! " If this lady, after the re- 



124 LATENT QUALITIES 

covery of her health, had been taken back to Edin- 
burg and placed in the same house, with precisely 
the same qualities of food, and surroundings, and 
occupations as far as possible, doubtless she would 
also have recovered the condition she was in when 
she resided there. Or, instead of that, if it had 
been known of whom, in the line of ancestry, she 
had inherited the personality which she still re- 
tained in a somewhat active condition, and had 
been taken to the place where that ancestor re- 
sided, and been subjected to the same kind of ex- 
periences which were most congenial and salutary 
to that ancestor, she would without doubt have 
experienced the invigoration of her mental power 
also, unless, from the surrendering one person- 
ality by disease, there was in this case so much im- 
poverishment of the other, by its existing in entire 
unity, as to approach a state of idiocy. 

Are these not the true explanations of phenom- 
ena that have heretofore been considered unex- 
planable? The case of a man is presented, (see 
page 14), who had received an injury of the head, 
and on his convalescence he spoke the Welsh lan- 
guage, which was the language of his youth, and 
which he had entirely lost. In remarking upon 
this, Prof. Combe, states that "the manner in 
which such an effect is produced is entirely un- 
known. Old people, when feeble, often relapse 
into the dialed of their youth." 

It seems a proper explanation to consider that 
they have cultivated another personality by remov- 
ing from the associations of their youth, and 



MAY BE AEOUSED TO ACTION. 125 

changing almost all their entire habits; and when 
this personality is nearly worn out, and becomes 
passive, then the other personality, which was cul- 
tivated in youth, manifests the peculiarities of its 
own sphere of cultivation. And doubtless, too, this 
relapsing into the "dialect of their youth" will be 
found to occur oftener when the individual has re- 
turned in his age again to the place where he lived 
in youthful days, breathing the same air, drinking 
the same water, viewing the same scenes, etc., all 
which would exert their influence to revive to a 
degree the personality which was active to be im- 
pressed and receive character from the experiences 
of his earlier life. But the change must not be 
one of a minor degree, especially if it is desired to 
arouse an absolutely latent personality; it should 
extend to almost all the surroundings and influ- 
ences of his life, and should also be of a character 
which, if not at first, his desires would soon find 
congenial. 

It is by these laws that a more youthful, or more 
vigorous constitution may be revived or called up 
from its latency to action ; or, if not absolutely so, 
yet sufficiently to exercise the influence of its sus- 
taining power. 

There are frequent cases of youthful vigor in el- 
derly and aged people. — Case of lactation in a wo- 
man sixty years old, by which she nursed a grand- 
child two months old whose mother had died. — 
Medical and Surgical Reporter. 

But also, let it be remembered, the influences 
that would call to activity a latent feeble person- 



126 LATENT QUALITIES 

ality ought to be avoided, for indeed, by this same 
law, a feeble personality, or one having a tendency 
to disease, may be revived as well as a vigorous one, 
under the influences tending to such a result. 
Then, avoid the places as a residence as well as the 
habits and channels of thought which were cus- 
tomary with unhealthy or feeble ancestors and blood 
relations. 

And here may properly be quoted the terse re- 
marks of Prof. Draper, though applied to other 
varied phenomena. " Organisms of every kind, so 
far as presenting any resistance to change, are im- 
pressed without any difficulty by every exterior 
condition. The only things which are absolutely 
unchangeable are the laws of nature ; everything 
else is to be looked upon as an effect, or as a 
changeable phenomena, arising from the operation 
of those laws." — (Note also the bearing of the chap- 
ters on "Appetency," and " Influence of the Mind.") 

Just now has come to hand JSTo. I, of Vol. XXI, 
of the Medical and Surgical Reporter, July 3d, 
1869, and on turning its leaves, the following is 
presented on page 23. "A female child with two 
heads, was born a few days ago at Zerbst. A care- 
ful examination has shown that the spinal column 
is divided into two at the first of the true vertebrae, 
and that from this point two perfectly developed 
necks and heads proceed. The breast is half as 
broad again as is usual, the limbs simple and well 
formed. We have not yet heard in how far the in- 
ternal construction of the breast is simple or 
complex." These cases should not be called 



MAT BE AEOUSED TO ACTION". 127 

monsters, if that term conveys any meaning at all 
repulsive to the most aesthetic choice of genial 
thought; for it becomes a very interesting and 
beautiful illustration that absolute plurality of per- 
sonality of an individual is not only possible but 
may be the rule, while the separation of the two 
in a part of the individual, showing two visible 
heads, or two visible pelves, etc., is simply the ex- 
ception to the rule which locates the bodies en- 
tirely within each other. 

It should not be supposed that in any case the 
author would advise the imitation of the vices of a 
relative whose quality of personality, as far as bod- 
ily health is concerned, it is desirable to revive 
from latency to activity in one's self. All vices 
have their destructive tendencies, and may destroy 
the individual whose health seemed a model of ex- 
cellence ; besides, it should be considered that even 
those whose vices seem prominent, have generally 
their principal thoughts occupied in active and 
useful pursuits. The intemperate have in their so- 
ber hours, as a general thing, some useful work to 
do which engages the most of their attention. Be- 
sides, the intemperate man may have double per- 
sonality, one of which would be more distinctly 
active during intoxication, and the other during 
his sober hours. (See the case of the Irish porter, 
page 16.) The vice of dishonesty, even when ap- 
pearing prominent in an individual, doubtless has 
but a very little of thought given to it, while al- 
most the entire amount of mental effort is given to 
some useful industry : and because it is law in the 



128 LATENT QUALITIES 

social nature of man that there is right and there 
is wrong, doubtless, all who seem to be impelled, 
or are persuaded to wrong-doing, have an almost 
infinite longing to possess the power to overcome 
the inclination, or the temptation, and in that 
manner to be free from its consequences. 

There is a great want existing in the composition 
of the individual who is a thief by profession from 
the love of it ; and if it is merely from the desire 
of gain, then there is a great lack of the activity 
of the powers of reason in regard to the true nat- 
ural social laws of man ; and also, a lack of obser- 
vation as to the fact that it leads to pecuniary im- 
poverishment and degradation of the being whom 
we call human and humane. 

"So, also, he who is ready to abandon reason 
whenever any whimsical vapor floats upon his 
mind, names itself progress, and with false tongue 
tells him to abandon wife and home, and that 
he has liberty to be changeable in his marital 
affections, shows that he has not observed that 
all who follow such teaching, in a very short time, 
in a very few years, find that it yields only unhap- 
piness. With eyes open, he fails to see the sub- 
limer way of the pair who walk together, with 
affection growing still stronger with age, till the 
sun of their life sets peaceful and serene. 

However much we need to change our qualities 
of food, occupations, and general associations, etc., 
there is abundant room for those changes, all con- 
forming to virtue and honor. And as man needs 
but one and the same sun to give the light to his 



MAY BE AROUSED TO ACTION. 129 

days throughout his entire life, though sometimes 
that sun is nearer, and ^metimes farther, some- 
times shining with clear face, and sometimes ob- 
scured by clouds, even so does man need but one 
earthly, constant and confiding friend to illumine 
and cheer the pathway of his life. 

He who does not observe these facts, which sure- 
ly seem to be placed to the observation of all peo- 
ple, certainly must be so greatly wanting in the 
essential elements of wisdom, that his teachings 
and examples would be unsafe to follow, and should 
be avoided by all people. 

Plurality of personality Of the individual has its 
great uses: there is greater brain-power; there is 
more brain surface by means of a greater number 
of convolutions; there is greater precision of 
thought, by the different persons (united) having 
different qualities of mind, so as to observe the 
same subject, as it were, from different stand- 
points. 

One so qualified, is more liberal in his views on 
religious or denominational theories; and seeing 
from different stand-points, he can recognize 
more clearly the various relations of truths and er- 
rors entertained by the different religious sects. 
And if the plural personalities of the individual 
act synchronously, he does not vacillate and change 
his opinions often, though he might appear to do 
so in presenting the various features of a subject. 
But if those plural personalities do not act syn- 
chronously but alternately, one at one time, and 
another at another, then we should expect, as we 
6* 



130 LATEKT QUALITIES 

frequently find to be pie case, the individual 
changes his opinions, scJ ^at we may not at any time 
know what view of a subject he will favor, or what 
course he will be likely to take in any enterprise. 
Yet, even one. acting so vaguely at different times, 
will on some important occasions act with especial 
propriety, and exhibit an unexpected greatness of in- 
tellect and character, because then his different 
personalities act synchronously and with precision. 

Multitudes of facts will corroborate the truth of 
plural personality. We observe that children as 
they grow to manhood and womanhood, sometimes 
change, not only their features, but also their 
tastes for certain kinds of food — their likes and 
dislikes in almost everything — take on a stronger 
or a feebler constitution ; change their character, 
etc., so as to appear like another person. 

' In these cases, one personality, from disuse of 
its faculties, becomes more latent, and another 
from use of its faculties becomes more active. And 
even as twins are sometimes though seldom of the 
opposite sex, so do these personalities sometimes 
partake, one of the masculine, and another of the 
feminine element. The Medical Gazette quotes 
from a non-medical source the case of a young 
lady who married, had a child, and then com- 
menced to manifest whiskers, a rough voice, " and 
other more indisputable physical changes of sex." 

The New York Tribune, of July 14th, 1869, has 
the following among its scientific notes. A cor- 
respondent jof the American Naturalist states that 
a doe was recently shot near Minneapolis, Minn., 



MAY BE AEOUSED TO ACTION". 131 

carrying a beautiful pair of antlers, each with four 
branches, and asks whether this is a new fact in 
natural history, or not ? To which the editors re- 
ply, that they haye never heard of a female deer 
assuming the character of a male before. But it is 
a well established fact, that female birds living to 
old age, often assume the plumage, and, to a cer- 
tain extent, the habits of the male. In the Mu- 
seum of the Peabody Academy of Science, at Sa- 
lem, Mass., there is a pea-hen that in the spring 
before her death, at the age of nineteen years, 
changed her dull female plumage for the bright 
plumage and full tail of the male bird. N". Vick- 
ery, taxidermist of Lynn, Mass., had the specimen 
mounted." * 

Cases of hermaphrodism are wonderful illus- 
trations of plural personalities of the male and the 
female element being enclosed in the same body. 

When the orator's features assume a more than 
ordinary glow of intelligence, and by a seeming 
inspiration of thought and language, he presents 
to us new images of great beauty and truth, his 
power results from the plural personality of which 
he is possessed, all being revived to synchronous 
action, and to a precision of thought which is its 
consequence. And why should there not be pre- 
cision of thought upon a subject from plural per- 
sonalities acting synchronously, as well as precision 
of vision by viewing an object with two eyes some- 
what different, and located to view the object from 
different positions ? Are objects of vision more im- 
portant than subjects of contemplation ? Certain- 



132 LATEXT QUALITIES, ETC. 

ly not, for the vision is more able to recognize 
exact forms of all things, than the mind is to rec- 
ognize every feature of a subject, to acquire abso- 
lute truth. Therefore, there is the greater need 
of plural personalities to search out truth, than 
there is of two eyes to know the exact form of an 
object. ' 

In making available the plural personalities for 
the conservation of health and long life, the author 
should not be supposed to have any lack of regard 
for all other means of restoration. All other re- 
medial means, such as proper medicines, electricity 
when appropriate, etc., have their own powers to 
assist nature, or rather to be the vehicle through 
which nature carries on restorative processes; also, 
all the laws of mind and body, as presented under 
various heads, though, perhaps, from the order of 
presentment, seeming as not greatly appertaining 
to the subject, will, nevertheless, press forward for 
recognition by the scrutinizing mind, as laws that 
are advantageous to be used in making avail of 
any and all remedial agents. 






PLUEAL PERSONALITIES. 

In another part of this yolume attention has 
been called to the fact that, sometimes the mind 
will wander altogether from the subject of a 
printed page to other subjects, even while the 
eye continues to read line after line, and perhaps 
a page or more, when the mind returns to the sub- 
ject, only to find the eye reading much farther 
along in the contents of the work where the mind 
has not followed, and knows nothing at all of the 
subject. Even more extraordinary than this is the 
fact which may here be mentioned. Some per- 
sons, at times, while copying a manuscript or 
printed page, not only will read the lines, but also 
will copy them correctly, while the mind has wan- 
dered entirely away to some other subject for a 
brief period or longer. In these cases the eye and 
hand obey one personality, while the other person- 
ality is unconscious of this because its mental at- 
tention is directed entirely away. Sometimes, also, 
the mental attention of both personalities show 
manifest comprehensive and combined action, and 
each with united recognition of the other, as 
when an individual holds conversation on different 
subjects with two persons at the same time. 
Though the tongue cannot answer or reply to both 
synchronously, yet the mind, in its plurality of 
action, comprehends two speakers at the same 
time, and gives reply to one and then to the other. 



134 PLUKAL PERSONALITIES. 

There are many people who experience this com- 
prehensive synchronous mental action. 

The case above mentioned, where the hand and 
eye copies while the entire recognized mental ac- 
tion is directed to some other subject, appears to 
the author to be in part a key to the phenomena 
of planchette. And the " in part a key" may pro- 
perly have emphasis, because other natural laws 
come in to complete the hey and explain this phe- 
nomenon. And those other natural laws are noth- 
ing more than those of animal magnetism and psy- 
chology, which, when manifested in great degrees, 
is called clairvoyance. Before explaining fully how 
the marvels of planchette are accomplished, the 
author would say a few words only on this correla- 
tion of the vital forces, and on psychology, or 
mesmerism, and allude to an astonishing phenom- 
enon recognized in standard works on entomology. 

Bring a female Kentish Glory Moth from the 
chrysalis, and take her immediately in a closed 
box out into her native woods, and in a very short 
time will arrive a company of male " Glories," and 
light upon or hover about the prison-house of 
the coveted maiden, where, without this magic at- 
traction, you might walk a whole day without see- 
ing a single one, the Kentish Glory being gener- 
ally reputed to be a very rare moth ; but as many 
as one hundred and twenty male Glories have been 
thus decoyed to their capture in a few hours by 
the charms of a couple of lady Glories shut up in a 
box. This exemplifies a great power of animal 
magnetism or clairvoyance by which they know 



PSYCHOLOGY AND MESMEEISM. 135 

both the location and condition of one of their 
own race at a distance of more than a mile, and 
the sides of a wooden box intervening. 

"Correlation of Forces" is a fact accepted in 
science in its application to motion, heat, light 
and electricity, meaning that those forces are con- 
vertible one into another. May not the term cor- 
relation of forces be very properly applied to vital 
phenomena? When the vital force is moving 
nmscle and brain, it cannot equally, at the same 
time, restore the waste of muscle and brain ; also, 
when this same vital force is restoring muscular 
and brain exhaustion, it cannot at the same time 
equally support muscular and brain activity; 
therefore the necessity of rest of body and mind 
at night for restoration from the waste by mus- 
cular and brain action during the day. The vital 
force cannot act so powerfully in its ways and 
means to digest food when the mind is intensely 
active, nor is one arm so powerful to lift a weight 
while the other arm is likewise lifting. 

It is because of the correlation of the vital forces 
that the assimilation of digested food goes on best 
while the mind is passive. 

Now, suppose in a case of active plural person- 
alities of an individual, those personalities act syn- 
chronously and communicatively but not both 
mentally, for, suppose that the vital power of the 
individual is sufficient to support only the psycho- 
logical action of one personality and not its men- 
tal, and support the mental action of the other 
personality and not its psychological, then, from 



136 PLUEAL PEKSOKALITIES. 

the aboye stated laws, the following facts would 
scarcely seem to be strange : 

In the plural personalities of an individual, one 
of those personalities may predominate in its psy- 
chological powers, with scarcely any mental, and 
the other may predominate in its mental powers 
with scarcely any psychological ; and the psycho- 
logical personality may become acquainted with 
conditions and circumstances, with the nature of 
their progressive action, and may transfer this 
knowledge directly to the mental personality when 
they act unitedly, and so produce what is called 
presentiment, which is a consciousness of what is 
to be without being able to recognize sufficient 
reasons for this mental recognition. For instance, 
an individual has been exposed to the poison of 
typhus fever, but before it brings on the disease 
his psychological personality recognizes that the 
amount of exposure and the condition of his sys- 
tem will cause death, and the psychological per- 
sonality transfers the knowledge of this ultimate 
consequence directly to the mental personality and 
he recognizes it in the manner called presentiment. 

The psychological personality of one individual 
may also gain knowledge from or through the 
mental and psychological personalities of other in- 
dividuals, and likewise transfer it to the mental 
personality, so that the individual gains presenti- 
mental knowledge of various circumstances and 
affairs. Most people recognize the truth of presen- 
timent, and the above seems to the author to af- 
ford a reasonable explanation. 



PSYCHOLOGY AND MESMERISM. 137 

But does not the psychological personality eyer 
transfer its knowledge by a less direct means than 
by conjoined action with the mental personality 
which gives rise to presentiment? And if the 
manifestations of planchette and similar phenom- 
. ena are not fictitious, is it not by them that the 
psychological personality, not then acting conjoint- 
ly with the mental, transfers its knowledge by 
writing, moving the hands of an individual by the 
agency of its own sets of nerves, so that the men- 
tal personality of the individual does not recognize 
that they are the hands of its own body also, that 
are thus moved, though the board appears to move 
itself, or to be moved by an outward unknown 
power. 

The author has taken no special interest in plan- 
chette or kindred phenomena as regards the sup- 
position of their dealings with disembodied spirits 
or unnatural agencies, and believes that such phe- 
nomenon simply echoes through psychological per- 
sonalities the thoughts, imaginations, wishes, hopes, 
fears, etc., of the embodied personalities concerned 
in being the agents and subjects of its operations. 
This, at least, appears to the author to be not be- 
yond the province of the laws that exist in the 
mental, physiological and psychological constitu- 
tion of man. 

The fact (see anatomical phenomenon), of two 
heads having one body, and each head, or mental 
personality, using that body, shows plainly that 
distinct personalities, mental or psychological, 
contained within one skull may do the same thing. 



138 



PLURAL PERSONALITIES. 



The term " psychological personality " used in 
the preceding pages, is not intended to compre- 
hend an entire personality, but only a part, the other 
part of the same personality being mental; and 
of two personalities of an individual, each one may 
have its psychological powers, and also its mental 




powers ; or one may manifest mostly or solely pys- 
chological powers, and the other mostly or solely 
mental, having varied degrees in this respect. 

Although these two powers of one personality, 
may of themselves afford explanation of many 



PSYCHOLOGY AND MESMEKISM. 139 

strange phenomena, yet there is much that is better 
accounted for through the plurality of personal- 
ities, with each possessing one or both of these 
powers. 

When one personality exists with predominant 
physical and psychological powers, and the other 
with predominant mental, the features will show 
these characteristics. 

The portrait on the preceding page shows great 
powers of endurance, but the mental individuality 
will not always manifest precision in its views of 
the various features of a subject, because the plural 
personalities have not at all times synchronous men- 
tal action. The comprehensiveness of his mind 
should not be expected to be always uniform, for 
only on those occasions which require the exercise 
of more than ordinary intellectual comprehensive 
scrutiny will the reserved power come to his aid. 

In the features of the late John A. Eoebling, 
plural personalities show to a degree their com- 
bined intellectual expression. 

The following cut is a faithful portrait of Mr. 
Eoebling, one of the most skillful engineers of the 
age. He constructed the suspension aqueduct 
over the Alleghany Eiver at Pittsburg, the Mon- 
ongahela Suspension Bridge, a series of suspension 
aqueducts on the line of the Delaware and Hudson 
Canal, the great Eailroad Suspension Bridge across 
Niagara, the great Cincinnati Bridge, whose span 
is 1030 feet. The last great work on which he 
was engaged up to the time of his death was the 
East Eiver Bridge. He had prepared all the plans, 



140 



PLUEAL PERSONALITIES. 






and made most of the arrangements for its con- 
struction at the time of his death, which resulted 
indirectly from his foot having been crushed be- 
tween a cross-beam of the dock and a float which 
was entering the slip. 




Besides the foregoing, Mr. Eoebling engaged 
successfully in several other extensive engineering 
enterprises, for which he was well fitted by his ac- 
tive and comprehensive intellectual capabilities. 



PSYCHOLOGY AND M3SMERISM. 



141 




The above is a faithful portraiture of M. Eugene 
Rouher, Senator, late Minister of State, Minister 
of Finance, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, 
of the Orders of Leopold, the Black Eagle of Prus- 
sia, the Oak, St. Maurice, and St. Lazarus, etc. 
Plural mental personality and its power is strik- 
ingly shown in his features, which exhibit great 
capacity for intellectual work, haying effective 



142 PLURAL PERSONALITIES. 

precision. Account says of him, (Harper's Week- 
ly,) that " his early political connections, if he had 
any, which appears doubtful, seem to have sympa- 
thized with Orleanism." Now it is not probable 
that a man with such a feature would express ear- 
ly political convictions, for in his comprehensive 
conceptions he would comprehend that there is 
some right and reason in all parties, and would 
wait for sufficient developments before he would 
definitely show his preferences. 

" He concluded his collegiate studies at Cler- 
mont; graduated at law, in which he acquired a good 
repute. He was elected a representative after the 
Eevolution of 1848. Louis Napoleon, after his 
election to the Presidency, appointed M. Eouher 
Minister of Justice, and from this period his apti- 
tudes for parlimentary contention were established. 
In January 26, 1852, he was appointed Vice Pres- 
ident of the Council of State, and was charged 
with the administration of the section of Legis- 
lation, Justice and Foreign Affairs. In this new 
sphere of action his characteristic talents and capa- 
city for real work manifested themselves in a con- 
spicuous manner. M. Eouher was successively 
President of the Commission of Pensions to aged 
persons, member of Commission charged to distri- 
bute eight millions of francs in execution of the 
testamentary deposition of the Emperor Napoleon, 
and member of the Commission of the Universal 
Exposition of 1855. On the 3d of February in 
that year, he accepted the portfolio of Agricul- 
ture, Commerce and Public Works. Under his ad- 



PSYCHOLOGY AXD MESMERISM. 143 

ministration immense reforms have been accom- 
plished ; public works and improvements of every 
kind have been carried out all over the country. 

" In conjunction with Baroche he negotiated with 
Mr. Cobden the commercial treaty between France 
and England, which was signed on the 23d of 
January, 1860. The unexampled impetus given 
to the French trade by the treaty, has opened up 
prospects of prosperity far beyond the most san- 
guine expectations. Since 1860 he has negotiated 
the commercial treaties of France with Belgium, 
Prussia, the Zollverein and Italy, all based on the 
same enlightened and liberal principles. 

"In 1863, M. Eouher passed from the Ministry 
of Commerce to the Presidency of the Council of 
State. Toward the close of the year he replaced, 
ad interim, M. Boudet as Minister of the Interior. 
On the death of M. Billaut, Eouher succeeded him 
in the Premiership. This position he has been 
compelled recently to resign, owing to the pressure 
of the Third Party in the Corps Legislatif. He 
has been called to the Presidency of the French 
Senate. M. Eouher may justly be ranked among 
the great orators who have adorned the deliber- 
ative assemblies of France." — Harper's Weekly. 

The philosophy of the great intellectual power 
of M. Eouher is what we see in the features, the 
synchronous action of two minds. Even as two 
eyes can view an object and make it more distinct 
by combining the different effect on the different 
eyes, even so, he could view a subject with his plu- 
ral minds, and comprehending the various bear- 



144 PLURAL PERSONALITIES. 

ings, correct conclusions in regard to expediency 
would come to him almost without effort. But 
how, it may be asked, can mental action of plural 
personalities be manifest to an observer through 
the expression of the features? It is in the same 
way that the two eyes in viewing an object actual- 
ly see, (because of the two angles of vision,) two dif- 
ferent forms of the one object, which two forms 
occupy the same place, as the mind apprehends 
them through the vision ; and this gives more vivid 
outlines to all its parts, and the idea of solidity; 
also to a landscape it shows the perspective clearly. 
Even so, when the mental expressions of two or 
more personalities are pictured in one counte- 
nance, there is more vividness of the feature, — a 
something not easily described, which is the im- 
press of intellectual comprehensive power. 



APPENDIX. 

The instance of " double consciousness," of which Miss 

R was the subject, as presented on pages 11 and 12, 

is given more fully in an article furnished by Rev. Wm. S. 
Plumer, D.D., and published in the May number of Har- 
per's Magazine of 1860. As many very interesting features 
ofher case give additional corroborative evidence of plu- 
ral personalities of individuals, the author will here quote 
it in full ; and will also, by annotations, endeavor to show 
the points and bearings of the phenomena which this 
case exhibits. 

" For many years brief and meagre accounts of the re- 
markable case of Mary Reynolds have appeared in various 
quarters. In 1815 Major Elicott, Professor of Mathematics 
in the United States Military Academy at West Point, a 
relative of Miss Reynolds, communicated some of the facts 
of the case to the late Dr. Mitchell, of New York, by 
whom they were published in the Medical Repository. This 
statement is quoted by Professor Upham in his work on 
- Disordered Mental Action.' A further notice of the case 
appeared in the Alleghany Magazine. The late Archibald 
Alexander, D. D., many years later became interested in 
the subject, and secured materials for a full statement, 
which he proposed to place in the hands of Professor 
Henry, to be communicated to the American Philosophi- 
cal Society. But the death of Dr. Alexander prevented 
the execution of this design. Dr. Wayland, in a note to 
the later editions of his ' Intellectual Philosophy,' refers 
to this case as ' more remarkable than any that he had met 
with elsewhere,' and copies a considerable part of the 
statement of the subject herself, other portions of which I 
am enabled to give. All the accessible details of a case so 
1 



146 COKROBOEATIVE FACTS. 

singular should be placed upon permanent rocord. The 
following statement, which is more full and complete than 
any which has heretofore been prepared, embodies, I be- 
lieve, all that can now be known in relation to it. The 
venerable Mr. John Reynolds, who is honored by all who 
know him, the brother of. Mary, and his son, the Rev. 
John V. Reynolds, D.D., of Meadville, Pennsylvania, in 
whose family the last years of her life were passed, will 
vouch for the minute accuracy of all that is here stated. 
Many others who are still living will testify to the general 
truthfulness of the statements which follow. 

" Toward the close of the last century "William Reynolds, 
with his family, emigrated from England to America. He 
belonged to the Baptist denomination, and was an inti- 
mate friend of Robert Hall and other distinguished Dis- 
senters, and in after years his house, in what was then the 
'Far West,' became a 'stopping-place' for the pioneer 
missionaries in their laborious excursions into the wilder- 
ness. 

" William Reynolds, leaving the remainder of his family 
in New York, took his son John, a lad of fourteen years, 
and set out to find a new home. They pitched upon a 
spot in Venango County, in Western Pennsylvania, be- 
tween Franklin and what is now known as Titusville — 
twelve miles from the former, and six from the latter. The 
whole surrounding country was an unbroken wilderness ; 
the nearest white neighbors being, as far as he knew, the 
few inhabitants of Franklin on the one side, and Jonathan 
Titus, the proprietor of the land on which Titusville now 
stands, on the other. 

"Here, in the unbroken wilderness, William Reynolds 
and his young son built a log-cabin, in which the father 
left the lad while he returned to New York to bring the 
remainder of the family to their new home. For four 
months the boy remained alone in the cabin, rarely seeing 
the face of a white man, but being frequently visited by 
Indians. In due time the Reynolds family were reunited 
in their new Western home. 



APPENDIX. 147 

" Of this family was a daughter, Mary Reynolds. She 
was born in England, and was a child when brought to 
America. Her childhood and youth appear to have been 
marked by no extraordinary incidents. ' She possessed 
an excellent capacity,' says her kinsman, Professor Elicott, 
'and enjoyed fair opportunities to acquire knowledge. 
Besides the domestic arts and social attainments, she had 
improved her mind by reading and conversation. Her 
memory was capacious, and well stored with a copious 
stock of ideas.' Though in no respect brilliant, she seems 
to have been naturally endowed with an uncommonly 
well-balanced organization, physical, mental, and moral. 

" "When she had reached about eighteen years of age she 
became subject to occasional attacks of 'fits.' Of the ex- 
citing cause and precise character of these no reliable in- 
formation can be attained ; for the new country in which 
she resided contained no physican competent to form a 
correct diagnosis of her case. An acute physiologist, 
taking account of the time when these attacks first ap- 
peared, and that of their final disappearance, would form 
an opinion as to their immediate physical cause. 

" On Sunday, in the spring of 1811, when she was about 
nineteen years of age, she had an attack of unusual sever- 
ity. She had taken a book and gone into the fields, at 
some distance from the house, that she might read in quiet. 
She was found lying in a state of utter insensibility. 
When she recovered her consciousness she was blind and 
deaf, and continued in this state for five or six weeks. 
The sense of hearing returned suddenly and entirely ; that 
of sight more gradually, but in the end perfectly. 

(A) " About three months after this attack, when she had 
apparently nearly recovered her usual health, though still 
somewhat feeble, she was found one morning, long after 
her usual hour of rising, in a profound sleep, from which 
it was impossible to arouse her. After some hours she 
awoke, but had lost all recollection of her former life. All 
the knowledge which she had acquired had passed away 
from her. She knew neither father nor mother, brothei s 



148 COEEOBOEATIYE FACTS. 

nor sisters. She was ignorant of the use of the most famil- 
iar implements, and of the commonest details of everyday 
life. She had not the slightest consciousness that she had 
ever existed previous to the moment in which she awoke 
from that mysterious slumber. As far as all acquired 
knowledge was concerned, her condition was precisely 
that of a new-born infant. All of the past that remained 
to her was the faculty of pronouncing a few words ; and 
this seems to have been as purely instinctive as the wail- 
ings of an infant, for the words which she uttered were 
connected with no ideas in her mind. Until she was 
taught their significance they were unmeaning sounds to 
her. 

(B) " But in this state she differed from an infant in this, 
that her faculty of acquiring knowledge was that of a per- 
son in the possession of mature intellect, fully capable of 
dealing at once with the facts of existence. She therefore 
rapidly acquired a knowledge of the world into which she 
had, as it were, been so mysteriously re-born. 

" She continued in this state for about five weeks, when 
one morning she again awoke in her natural state, without 
any intimation from memory or consciousness that any 
thing unusual had happened to her. The five weeks that 
she had passed in her abnormal state were to her as though 
they had never been. All the knowledge and experience 
which had been so strangely lost were as strangely re- 
stored ; and she took up life again at the precise point 
where she had left it when she fell into that slumber from 
which she had awoke to the new life. She was surprised 
at the change of the season and the different arrangements 
of the things around her, which seemed to her to have 
been wrought in a single night. Her friends rejoiced as if 
they had received her back from the dead, fondly trusting 
that her restoration would be permanent, and that the ex- 
traordinary occurrences of that mysterious five weeks 
would never be repeated. But their anticipations were 
not to be realized. 

" After the lapse of a few weeks she again fell into a pro- 



APPENDIX. 149 

found slumber, from which she awoke in her second state, 
taking up her new life again precisely where she had left 
it when she before passed from that state. The whole 
previous life of which memory or consciousnes remained 
was comprised in the limits of the five weeks which she 
had passed in this state. Her knowledge wa3 confined 
within the narrow limits of what she had then acquired. 

" These alternations from one state to the other continued 
for fifteen or sixteen years, but finally ceased when she 
had attained the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, leaving 
her permanently in her second state, in which she remain- 
ed without change for the last quarter of a century of her 
life. 

" In 1836, after these changes had wholly ceased, she 
wrote at the request of her nephew, Rev. John Y. Rey- 
nolds, D.D., of whose family she was then an inmate, a 
statement of some of the facts of her remarkable experi- 
ence. As she was then in her 'second state,' in which 
she had no recollection of the feelings or incidents of her 
other state, she relied upon the testimony of her friends 
for the circumstances related concerning the ' first state.' 
She says : 

" 'From the spring of 1811, when the first change oc- 
curred, until within eight or ten years, frequently changing 
from my first to my second, and from my second to my 
first state, I was more than three-fourths of my time in my 
second state. There was not any regularity as to the 
length of time that the one or the other continued. Some- 
times I remained several months, sometimes only a few 
weeks, or even days, in my second state ; but in no in- 
stance did I continue more than twenty days in my first 
state. The transitions from one to the other always took 
place during sleep. In passing from my second to my 
first state nothing special was noticeable in the character 
of my sleep. But in passing from my first to my second 
state my sleep was so profound that no one could awake 
me, and it not unfrequently continued eighteen or twenty 
hours. 



150 CORROBORATIVE FACTS. 

'"Whatever knowledge I acquired in my second state 
became familiar to me in that state, and I made such pro- 
ficiency that I became well acquainted w T ith things, and 
was, in general, as intelligent in that as in my first state. 

" ' My mental sufferings in the near prospect of the trans- 
ition from either state to the other, but particularly from 
the first to the second (for I commonly had a presentiment 
of the change for a short time before it took place), were 
very great, for 1 feared I might never revert so as to know 
again in this world, as I then knew them, those who were 
dear to me. My feelings, in this respect, were not unlike 
those of one about to be separated from loved ones by 
death. During the earlier stages of my disease I had no 
idea, while in my second state, of employing my time in 
any thing useful. I cared for nothing but to ramble about, 
and never tired walking through the fields and woods. I 
ate and slept very little. Sometimes for two or three con- 
secutive days and nights I would neither eat nor sleep. I 
would often conceive prejudices, without cause, against 
my best friends. These feelings, however, began gradually 
to wear away, and eventually quite disappeared.' 

" The two lives which Mary Reynolds lived for many 
years were thus entirely separate. Each was complete in 
itself, the fragments of which it was composed, though in 
reality separated by the portions of the other life inter- 
vening, succeeded each other in uninterrupted succession, 
as far as the evidence of her own memory or consciousness 
was concerned. The thoughts and feelings, the know- 
ledge and experience, the joys and sorrows, the likes and 
dislikes of the one state did not in any way influence or 
modify those of the other. (C) But not only were the 
two lives entirely separate, but her character and habits in 
the two states were wholly different, In her first stale 
she was quiet and sedate, sober and pensive, almost to mel- 
ancholy, with an intellect sound though rather slow in its oper- 
ations, and apparently singularly destitute of the imaginative 
faculty. In her second state she was gay and cheerful, 
extravagantly fond of society, of fun and practical jokes, with a 



APPENDIX. 151 

lively fancy and a strong propensity for versification and rhym- 
ing, though, some of her poetical productions appear to 
have possessed merit of a high order. The difference in 
her character in the two states was manifested in almost 
every act and habit. (D) Her handwriting in the one state 
differed wholly from that of the other. In her natural 
state the strange double life which she led was the cause 
of great unhappiness. She looked upon it as a severe af- 
fliction from the hand of Providence, and dreaded a re- 
lapse into the opposite state, fearing that she might never 
recover from it, and so might never again in this life know 
the friends of her youth, nor her parents, the guardians of 
her chil dhood. She had a great desire to retain a knowledge 
and memory of them. But in her abnormal state, though 
the prospect of changing into her natural state was far 
from being pleasant to her, yet it was for quite different 
reasons. She looked upon it as passing from a bright and 
joyous into a dull and stupid phase of life. Yet to her it 
was often a source of merriment, and the occasion of fre- 
quent humorous deceptions practiced upon her friends. 

" Having given a general outline of the facts of this singu- 
lar case, I will now detail such separate incidents as I have 
been able to collect. 

" At the time of her first change her brother John was a 
permanent inhabitant of Meadville. Hearing of her re- 
markable change he visited her at the old homestead. Of 
course she did not recognize him. But having been told 
of his relationship to her, she soon became warmly at- 
tached to him, and her affection grew as he repeated his 
visits during her continuance in her second state. 

" In her second state she had strong feelings of fondness 
or of dislike to persons. During the early part of her 
change to an unnatural state her friends found it necessary 
to keep a watchful eye upon her, and often to put restraint 
upon her movements. This restraint was never that of 
physical force, but consisted in prohibitory commands. 
This excited her displeasure, so that for some time she af- 



152 CORROBORATIVE FACTS. 

fected to believe that those about her were not her relatives, 
as they affirmed that they were. 

" She became very anxious to visit her brother in Mead- 
ville, but her friends did not think it advisable to give her 
permission. Between one and two years after the first 
change, and while in her second state, she left home on 
horseback — an exercise of which she was very fond, and 
in which she was freely indulged — under pretense of visit- 
ing a neighbor. She made the visit — for she always care- 
fully kept the letter of her word, though not always the 
spirit — but she made her visit very brief, and then rode on 
to Meadville, a distance of nearly thirty miles. Her fam- 
ily soon learned where she had gone, and allowed her to 
remain some weeks. During that time she was a guest of 
Mrs. Kennedy, whose husband, Dr. Kennedy, had recently 
died. At the same time a young lady, Miss Nancy Dewey, 
was a guest in the same family. Between her and Mary 
Reynolds a strong friendship sprang up. One night they 
agreed together to play off a practical joke on Mr. John 
Reynolds, who was boarding at the same house. But it 
happened that neither of the young ladies awoke at the 
right time, and when Mary awoke in the morning she had 
changed to her natural state. 

" She now found herself in a strange house, for she had 
never been in Meadville in her natural state. She had for 
a sleeping companion a person who was a total stranger. 
She saw nothing with which she was familiar, and could 
not imagine where she was. Being in her natural state 
quiet and reserved, and even shy, she asked no questions. 
Miss Dewey spoke of the trick which they had proposed 
to play but had not awaked to perform. Miss Reynolds 
made no reply. She remembered nothing of the trick, 
and knew not who it was that addressed her. Miss Dewey 
saw that something unusual had occurred. She probably 
suspected the true state of the matter, for she had been 
fully told of the singular changes to which Miss Reynolds 
was subject. So she became silent. 

" Miss Reynolds dressed herself and found her way down 



APPENDIX. 153 

stairs, wondering and perplexed, but waiting to see what 
would happen, and hoping that something would soon oc- 
cur that would solve the mystery. Mrs. Kennedy (after- 
ward the wife of Mr. John Reynolds) came into the sitting- 
room, and spoke in her usually cheerful manner; but Mary 
knew her not. Soon after her brother John entered the 
room. Then all was at once explained. In both states 
she knew him. In both states she knew that he resided 
in Meadville. So she knew she must be in Meadvilie. She 
informed him of the occurrence of the change, though 
there was little need of it. The observation of a moment 
or two, and the change in her disposition, were sufficient 
to reveal to her friends the transition from one state to the 
other. She was then introduced anew to those among 
whom she had so strangely fallen. She remained at Mrs 
Kennedy's, in Meadville, for some days, and then returned 
home. 

" Very soon after her return she awoke one night, and 
arousing a sister with whom she was sleeping, she ex- 
claimed, ' Come, Nancy ! it is time to get up and play that 
trick on John ! ' She had changed into her second state, 
and supposed that she was still in Meadville and sleeping 
with Miss Nancy Dewey, and that it was the same night 
on which they had planned the joke. When she found 
she had returned to the ' Nocturnal Shades,' as she called 
her home in Yenango when she was in her second state, 
she was much chagrined, for the larger society she found 
in Meadville was, in that state, much more to her taste. 

(E) " The foregoing statement illustrates two things. One 
is, that she did not in one state recognize acquaintances 
of the other state ; the other is, that there was a blank in 
her memory of the period, however long, passed in a given 
state when she passed into the other. Thus weeks and 
months disappeared during one sleep. And the sleep from 
which she awoke seemed to her but the continuation of 
that into which she had fallen long before. 

" During the earlier period of these changes she mani- 
fested, while in her second state, many symptoms of wild- 



154 COEROBOKATIVE TACTS. 

ness and eccentricity, amounting almost to insanity. 
Proof of tliis is found in her long abstinence from food 
and sleep, and in her indifference to, and even strong preju- 
dices against, her best friends. 'For some time,' she 
writes, ' after I had been in my second state, my feelings 
were such that, had all my friends been lying dead around 
me, I do not think it would have given me one moment's 
pain of mind. At that time my feelings were never moved 
with the manifestations of joy or sorrow. I had no idea 
of the past or the future ; nothing but the present occupied 
my mind.' 

" She was also very restless, and had a strong and uncon- 
trollable inclination to wander off into the woods. Being 
utterly devoid of fear she could not be restrained by any 
representations her friends made to her respecting her 
perils from rattlesnakes, wolves, and bears, all of which 
were numerous in the vicinity. These things made her 
friends solicitous, and caused them to keep as close a 
watch as possible on all her movements. 

" It has been already stated that she was very careful to 
keep the letter of her word, though she did not feel herself 
bound by its spirit. She seemed rather to delight in find- 
ing some means or pretense of avoiding that, as giving her 
an opportunity of boasting of her smartness. She was very 
ingenious in finding such pretenses. But when once she 
promised to do or not to do a certain thing, her family and 
friends had perfect confidence that she would keep her 
word. 

" On one occasion in her ramblings she met a bear. 
She was on horseback riding along a path when she met 
it. In giving an account of the adventure on her return 
home, she said she had met a ' great black hog,' which 
acted very strangely. She said it grinned and growled at 
her, and would not get out of the way. She said her 
horse was frightened, and wished to turn back. She or- 
dered the black creature to leave the path, but it w T ould 
not mind her. ' Well,' she said, ' if you will not get out of 
the way, I will make you.' She was about to dismount 



APPENDIX. 155 

and attempt to drive it from the path, when it slowly re- 
treated, occasionally stopping, turning round, and growl- 
ing. She used to insist that the bears with which her friends 
sought to frighten her from rambling off too far, were on- 
ly ' black hogs.' 

"About the same time, in one of her rambles, she saw a 
rattlesnake, with the beauty of which she was struck. 
She attempted to capture it. Instead of making battle it 
attempted to escape. It ran under a heap of logs. She 
seized it by the tail just as it was disappearing. Providen- 
tially her foot slipped, and to save herself from a fall she 
let go the snake. She afterward thrust her arm into the 
hole, but it had gone beyond her reach. It was known to 
be a rattlesnake both by its appearance and by its rattle. 
She afterward became familiar with the species, and re- 
membered that the one she had pursued was like those 
which she now knew. 

"Daring this stage of her history there was one person, 
a brother-in-law, who had complete control over her. 
This was another proof of an unusual, if not of an insane 
state of mind. She did not dare to disobey his commands, 
yet if he left any opportunity she would evade them. For 
instance, one morning he said to her, ' Mary you must not 
ride over the hills to-day.' This he considered equivalent 
to telling her that she must not ride at all, as her home 
was surrounded with hills, and she could not avoid them 
if she followed any road. But as soon as he was out of 
the way she got a horse, left home, and was gone nearly 
all day. In the evening he said, ' Mary, did I not tell you 
that you must not ride to-day?' She replied, ' No ! you 
told me I must not ride over the hills, and I did not ; but 
I rode through all the hollows I could find.' 

" Another singular fact should here be mentioned. Dur- 
ing that same period in the history of her case, immedi- 
ately after falling asleep, she would, in an audible voice, 
narrate the events of the day in which she had been an 
actor, sometimes laughing heartily at some joke she had 
played oS. She would then lay out her plans for the next 



156 CORROBORATIVE FACTS. 

day. After this slie would become silent. The next day, 
unless thwarted, she would attempt to do all she had pro- 
posed, and in the order she had marked out. It has been 
stated that none of the knowledge or experience which 
Mary Reynolds had acquired during her early life, or while 
she was in her 'first state,' remained in her memory or 
passed over into her consciousness while she was in her 
second state. To this, however, there was one remarkable 
exception, the nature of which can best be stated in her 
own words, contained in the narrative from which I have 
before quoted. She says : 

" ' When I was for the first time in my second state, the 
family were one Sabbath preparing to go to Church at Ti- 
tusville. I was very anxious to accompany them, though 
at that time I was wholly ignorant of what preaching 
meant. They told me it was impossible for me to go. So, 
much to my dissatisfaction, I had to stay at home. On 
the night following that day I had a singular dream. I 
have a more distinct recollection of that dream than of any 
other thing which happened about that time. 

(F) " ' I dreamed that I was on a large plain, where 
neither a tree nor a stump was to be seen. It was beautifully 
green. A great number of persons, all clothed in white, 
were walking to and from a large river which flowed 
through the midst of the plain, singing as they walked. 
The music was the most delightful I ever heard. As I 
was standing and gazing with admiration on the scene be- 
fore me, I thought my sister Eliza, (who was dead), came 
up to me from among the throng, which had by this time 
collected — for I thought they increased in number very 
rapidly — and, with a sweet smile on her face, talked with 
me. Among other things, see told me I should join that 
company after a while, but that I could not then. While 
she was conversing with me I saw a very majestic person 
approach and ascend a platform that was erected about 
the middle of the plain. He opened a large book which 
he held in his hand, and began to speak, giving out for a 
.text, Revelation, iii. 20 : ' Behold, I stand at the door, and 



APPENDIX. 157 

knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I 
will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with 
me.' I was perfectly enraptured, for I thought he spoke 
to none but me. His eyes seemed to be directed toward 
me. ' Well,' I thought, ' this must be preaching ; for in 
my dream I remembered how I had been disappointed the 
day before at not being permitted to go to meeting, and I 
thought he knew my case, for he explained the Scriptures 
to me. The next day I repeated several passages, though 
at that time I could not read a word. It seemed that af- 
ter that dream I regained all my knowledge of the Scrip- 
tures. I frequently repeated passages of Scripture ; and 
when my friends, in reply to my assertion that they were 
contained in the Bible, would ask me how I knew that to 
be so, I told them the person whom I heard preaching in 
my dream made me acquainted with them. 

" ' When I arose the next morning after my dream I re- 
lated it to the family, and observed to them that I had 
been to a much more splended meeting than the one at 
which they had been. 

" 'In my dream I did not mingle with the company; 
but after I saw the person who ascended the pulpit, and 
when he commenced preaching, I became so interested 
that my attention was no longer attracted by the multi- 
tude, who were still moving about. But my sister re- 
mained by my side. 

" ' After this I used frequently to dream of seeing her. 
Particularly if any thing troubled me, she would appear 
to administer comfort. I loved to dream of her, though 
when awake I had not the slightest recollection of her. 
It was a remarkable circumstance that my sister and 
another particular friend, also dead, used to be my almost 
constant companions in my sleep. I have not dreamed of 
them since the earlier periods of my changes. I have 
wished much that I could, though at this time I do not re- 
member either of them except as they appeared to me in 
my dreams.' 

(G) " All her friends testified, and some still live to tes- 



158 CORROBORATIVE FACTS. 

tify, that at the time mentioned by her she appeared to re- 
cover her lost knowledge of much contained in the Holy 
Scriptures, though, as she says, she could not then read, 
and did not know the Bible from any other book. She 
never recovered any other knowledge in the same or like 
manner. 

" Her parents were both very pious and intelligent — in 
sentiment Baptists. They had been, as I have before said, 
intimately acquainted with the Rev. Robert Hall and 
other distinguished ministers of the same persuasion in 
England. Among them was a maternal uncle. After the 
neighborhood had became somewhat settled, her father, 
William Reynolds, used to invite those living near him to 
come to his house on Lord's Day. He would read a ser- 
mon to them, and offer prayer with them and for them. 
His house was a well-known stopping-place. Often the 
pioneer ministers, chiefly Presbyterian, during their labor- 
ious missionary excursions, rested and preached at his 
house. Under such influences Mary must have made 
large acquisitions of religious knowledge, and become fa- 
miliar with the words of Holy "Writ. What she had thus 
acquired and subsequently lost, she recovered in the re- 
markable manner mentioned. 

(H) " It should be stated that Mary knew the lady, who 
appeared to her in her dream, to be her deceased sister, 
not by recognizing her from memory, but by describing 
her appearance, and learning -from her family that the de- 
scription exactly suited the appearance of her sister. For 
in her second state, whether asleep or awake, she had no 
recollection of her sister as one whom she had previously 
known in everyday walks. One friend thinks also that 
he has heard Mary say that, in the dream, Eliza informed 
her that she was her sister. But this is not certain. It is 
certain, however, that she minutely described a person 
precisely corresponding to the appearance of her sister. 

(I) " The indications of mental unsoundness which char- 
acterized the earlier portions ofihe time which she passed 
in her second state grew fainter, and at length wholly dis- 



APPENDIX. 159 

appeared after these changes had ceased, leaving her per- 
manently in her abnormal state. This occurred about the 
year 1829, when she had reached her thirty-sixth year. 
She lived twenty-five years after this, wholly in her second 
state. (J) During this quarter of a century no one could 
have discovered in her any thing out of the ordinary way, 
except that she manifested an unusual degree of nervous- 
ness and restlessness ; yet that was not sufficient to attract 
particular attention. She was rational, sober, industrious, 
and gave good evidence of being a sincere Christian. For 
a number of years she was a consistent member of the 
Presbyterian Church. For some years she taught school, 
and in that capacity was both useful and acceptable. 

" During the last few years of her life she was a member 
of the family of her nephew, Rev. John V. Reynolds, D.D. 
Part of that time she kept house for him, showing a sound 
judgment, and manifesting a thorough acquaintance with 
the duties of her position. 

(K) " Her death occurred in January, 1854. In the morn- 
ing she arose in her usual health, ate her breakfast with a 
good appetite, and after breakfast went into the kitchen to 
superintend some matters in that department. In a few 
minutes the servant girl called to Dr. Reynolds, saying 
that his aunt had fallen down. He hastened to her, and 
assisted the girl in carrying her into the parlor, where she 
was laid on a sofa. The girl said that while Miss Mary 
was engaged about some matter, she suddenly raised her 
hands to her head and exclaimed, ' Oh ! I wonder what is 
the matter with my head.' She said no more, but imme- 
diately fell to the floor. When carried to the parlor she 
gasped once or twice, but never spoke, and then died. 
She was thus gratified in a wish which she had often ex- 
pressed : ' Sudden death, sudden glory ! ' She died at the 
age of somewhat more than sixty years. 

" The foregoing narrative embodies all that I have been 
able to gather which seemed to me to throw any light 
upon this case of Double Consciousness, the most remark- 
able which has been recorded. My object in preparing it 



160 



COEROBOKATIVE PACTS, 



has been to place before the public, and especially before 
those interested in mental philosophy the well authenti- 
cated facts in the case. That the case was a genuine one 
admits of no doubt. The leading facts are authenticated 
by a chain of testimony furnished by witnesses of unim- 
peachable character, covering the whole period. Mary 
Reynolds had no motive for practicing an imposture ; and 
her mental and moral character forbids the supposition 
that she had either the disposition or ability to plan and 
carry out such a fraud ; and had she done so, she could not 
have avoided detection in the course of the fifteen years 
during which the pretended changes alternated, and the 
subsequent quarter of a century, which she professed to 
pass wholly in her second state. 

(L) " The phenomena presented were as if her body was 
the house of two souls, not occupied by both at the same 
time, but alternately, first by one, then by the other, each 
in turn ejecting the other, until at last the usurper gained 
and held possession, after a struggle of fifteen years. For 
not only did she seem to have two memories, each in its 
turn active, and then dormant ; but the whole structure of 
her mind and consciousness, and their mode of operating 
seemed dissimilar, according to her state. Her sjmipathies, 
her method of reasoning, her tastes, her friendships, and 
the reasons which lead to their formation, were in one 
state wholly unlike what they were in the other. She had 
different objects of desire, took different views of life, 
looked at things through a different medium, according to 
her state. 

(M) " That her ' second state ' had its origin in, and was 
accompanied by physical disease, is evident from many 
considerations. She herself was conscious of this. In her 
narrative she writes : ' Whenever I changed into my nat- 
ural state, I was very much debilitated. When in my 
second state, I had no inclination for either food or sleep. 
My strength at such times was entirely artificial. 1 gener- 
ally had a flush in one cheek, and continued thirst, which 
denotes inward fever.' Physiologists, considering the time 



APPENDIX. 161 

of life when the strange phenomena of her life began, and 
the time of their termination, will form some conclusions 
as to their ultimate cause ; but that the brain was the or- 
gan immediately affected is rendered probable from the 
convulsions that preceded the first change, and from the 
manner of her death, which unmistakably indicated that 
the brain was disordered. But the facts, as far as ascer- 
tainable now, fail to explain the special features of her 
case ; the two lives, covering fifteen years, wholly uncon- 
nected with each other, yet each continuous from state to 
state ; and the final settling down into a state of being last- 
ing for a quarter of a century, and accompanied by no 
special indications of either mental or physical disorder, 
yet which had no apparent relation to or connection with 
that which she had passed for the first nineteen years of 
her life, and which continued through a portion of the 
succeeding fifteen years. 

" The bearings of this case on the sanitive treatment of 
the insane, on questions of mental science beyond those 
alluded to, on questions of conscience or casuistry, and 
on the religious aspect of the matter, are left to the think- 
ing world. None will be more ready than the author to 
receive light on any of these important and intricate mat- 
ters." 

Western Theological Seminaey, 1859 



ANNOTATIONS ON THE PRECEDING CASE. 

There are several features of the case of Miss Reynolds, 
which have very important bearing in corroborating the 
plurality of personalities, and of the arguments which the 
author has presented in the foregoing pages of this work. 
It will be noticed by the reader, that this lady was born in 
England, and had, in coming to America, become subjected 
to a different climate, etc., from that which her parents 
and herself had previously experienced. She had become 
subject to fits which became severe at her mature age, for 



162 ANNOTATION'S ON THE PRECEDING CASE. 

which nature sought a remedy by the resort even to that 
of changing her predominant personality. In her changed 
state, at first, she retained nothing of her former person- 
ality, nothing except the faculty of pronouncing a few 
words instinctively, the meaning of which she did not un- 
derstand. This shows how absolute was the change ; and 
yet there lingered in a very small degree, automatic 
enunciations, which resulted from the acquirements of 
her former personality. 

(A, page 147 and 148.) At the time of her first change, it 
was after a long sleep ; and possibly this change succeeded 
a fit from which she never would have awaked had it not 
been to awake in another personality from that which had 
become too much exhausted to recover its mental action. 

In her changed personality (B page 148,) she acquired 
knowledge faster than an infant, because that personality 
had experienced physical growth before its mental indi- 
viduality had been awakened. 

(C, page 150.) Her character and habits in the two states 
were wholly different. In her first state she was quiet 
and sedate almost to melancholy, with an intellect which 
the narrator called sound though rather slow in its oper- 
ations; but in her second state she was gay and cheerful, 
extravagantly fond of society, of fun and practical jokes, 
etc. These are important considerations, — the sentences 
in the narration, page 150, are italicised by the author. It 
is evident that her first personality was one that she had 
taken on from some line ofher ancestry — a diseased inher- 
itance, which would eventually have destroyed her life 
early, had not nature made a successful struggle to change 
her personality. 

(D, page 151.) Her handwriting in the one state differed 
wholly from that of the other. This, also, shows that a 
different personality used different nerve-fibres, which also 
set to action different fibrillar of the muscles, therewith 
expressing a different mental entity. 

(E, page 153.) The blank in her memory of the period of 
one state when she passed into the other, shows that one 



AKKOTATIOKS OK THE PKECEDING CASE. 1C3 

personality, during that time, was passive; and when one 
personality was passive, it was not then subject to the ex- 
periences that bring fatigue on body and mind. And as 
we hear nothing in the account of the return of her fits, it 
must be judged that the long sleep of one personality had 
been salutary and recuperative in its influence. 

(F, page 156 — see the entire pages 156 and 157.) The 
dream was, doubtless, the result of a small glimmering re- 
vival of her former personality which remembered her 
sister Eliza, with whom her former personality had been 
well acquainted. And there was also a glimmering re- 
membrance of the minister going into the pulpit, which 
she had often witnessed in her former personality ; and 
the text, " Behold, I stand at the door and knock," had 
doubtless been the subject of a discourse heard when in 
her former personality, or at least it is very probable these 
words had been familiar in her former memories. And 
after that dream, while still in her second state, she re- 
gained all her knowledge of the Scriptures which she pos- 
sessed in her former state. Here is a very important point 
in considering plural personalities. Her former person- 
ality, as regards Scriptural knowledge, and her second 
personality both acting together. This shows that not 
only can two hemispheres of the brain (see pages 53 and 
54,) act either separately or together upon one subject, 
but also that it is possible for two entire hemispheres du- 
plicated within themselves to absolute plural personalities, 
to have their separate different experiences, and also to act 
together to recognize a subject with unity. 

(G-, see page 157 and 158.) Though in her second person- 
ality she recovered the knowledge of the Scriptures which 
belonged to her other (former) personality, she did not re- 
cover any other knowledge in the same or like manner. 
This shows that Scriptural knowledge had made a pecu- 
liar impression on her former personality ; and her parents 
being very pious people, as the context shows, and their 
anxiety, doubtless, exercised some psychological influence 



164 ANNOTATIONS ON THE PRECEDING CASE. 

over her to cause her to regain so much of lier former per- 
sonality. 

(H, page 158.) There was, doubtless, sufficient partial 
revival of her former personality which caused her to rec- 
ognize her desceased sister, though it seems her second 
personality did not hold her in remembrance. But the 
history upon this is not clear further than that "it is cer- 
tain, however, that she minutely described a person precisely 
corresponding to the appearance of her sister" 

(I, page 158.) It could hardly be expected that a grown 
up body should awake in another mental personality and 
very rapidly gain experiences showing expressions which 
in all respects would appear to be absolutely normal. And 
especially would this be so while the second personality 
had not yet gained full power to retain its ascendancy 
over the individual. 

(J, page 159.) During a quarter of a century she remained 
in her second state ; and, doubtless, this resort of nature 
cured her fits and gave her a good lease of life. 

(K, page 159.) She probably died of apoplexy in a man- 
ner not peculiar, nor remarkable any more than is often 
the case with many other persons. 

(L, see page 160.) It will be seen that the Rev. Wm. S. 
Plumer, D.D., recognizes that "the phenomena presented, 
were as if her body was the house of two souls, — of one 
and the other alternately, till after awhile one entirely su- 
perseded the other in its power of possession." The ex- 
traordinary phenomena of her existence seemed, in his 
opinion, to have no other interpretation ; but the reader will 
see the bearing of the circumstance that her second per- 
sonality became united with a portion of the first in recog- 
nition of Scriptural knowledge, and this proves, as before 
stated, a step towards and the possibility of the entire 
unity of plural personalities. 

(M, see page 160.) Her second state had its origin in 
physical disease only in this way : It was the resort of na- 
ture to preserve her life; for she herself said, "whenever 
I changed into my natural (first) state, I was very much 



akkotatioks ok the pkecedistg case. 165 

debilitated." She did not complain of debility in her sec- 
ond state — her mind recognized that she felt strong, 
though she called this strength artificial, because she gen- 
erally had a flush in one cheek and continued thirst. Anx- 
iety from the strangeness of the change may have caused 
her to think the flush of the cheek to be oftener or of more 
importance than it was ; for indeed the account (see the 
context, page 161), alludes to her " final settling clown into 
a state of being (her second state) lasting for a quarter of 
a century, and accompanied by no special indications of 
either mental or physical disorder." 









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